


The End of the World as We Know It

by Tsianphiel



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-02 13:02:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 31,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8668591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsianphiel/pseuds/Tsianphiel
Summary: It always seems strange to me, the treatment of Daryl as either a protector or an asshole. Daryl has absolutely no game, and I wanted to try to capture that. I guess I have no idea what I'm doing.





	1. This is how the world ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the way the world ends  
> Not with a bang but a whimper.
> 
> \- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
> 
> I keep thinking about that poem every time I watch The Walking Dead. If we don't kill ourselves with global warming, I suspect it will be the natural world that gets the better of us. Anyway. Gabby. Daryl. Explosions and misdirection.

Eventually the screaming stopped. It didn't happen abruptly. The gnawing noises of teeth ripping through flesh, fat and guts was mixed with the bubbly noises of wet breathing. Weak whimpers that made her hair stand on end. Terrified little sounds signaling the end of one life, and maybe the beginning of another. She wasn't sure if it could technically be called life. Unlife, maybe. Unliving.

She sat in the boarded up basement wondering about things like life, how life could be categorized and if the rotting corpses could rightly be called "alive" or maybe just spastic reflexes wired together by decaying flesh and driven by pure hunger. She sat there thinking about those things while her friends and neighbors were torn to pieces by the walking dead because that was all she could do. Someone once said that God is a bullet. If God was a bullet, if there was mercy, she should have been dead too. Hearing the groans of the corpses and the dying whimpers of people she had known for years - for her whole life, being gutted and torn apart and the soft dripping of water (maybe blood), she fell asleep. She was exhausted from the emotional strain of not allowing herself to go crazy in a circumstance that would have driven anyone insane.

Like every other situation she had ever been in, this one passed with time. She spent four days in the dank and musty basement until she could no longer hear the shuffling of corpses stumbling around above her. She was dehydrated, hungry and almost mad when she opened the barred doors to her shelter, a baseball bat in her one hand and a backpack full of clothes and other useless things in the other one. She'd brought a tent. Camping gear. None of it would be very useful to her, because who could safely pitch a tent nowadays without risking being caught by the merciless hunger of the dead? Still she hung on to the pack, because that was all she had left. The doors to the basement had been partially blocked by something. Someone. A pair of man's shoes stuck out of a bloodied mess that might at one point have been jeans. Everything above the shins had been devoured completely. There was no need to be careful. The ravenous corpses had eaten everything, including his face and parts of his bashed open head in their hunger to feed whatever it was that wouldn't let them rest. She recognized the shoes as her father's, but there was nothing else there that she could even remotely connect to the kind and gentle man he had been.

She was thinking briefly about capitalism, then. Standing in the open doorway with a pair of shins for company, she was thinking "this is what happens when capitalism doesn't end. We get hungry. And then we devour each other." She let the door close behind her. Shrugged on her backpack (the useless weight making her shoulders sag) and stopped thinking altogether when she saw what the horde of hunger had done to everyone she had ever known. At this point her brain had shut down in a move to protect herself from the pure horror of it. A weak moan from her right told her one of them had entered that state of reflexive need that kept them functioning long after the flesh had fallen from their bones, but she wouldn't look, couldn't. Instead she made her way through the charnel house, trying to reach the exit, not really caring what or who she stepped in, as long as she got out. The smell of shit and metal was strong. Her soles stuck a bit to the floor, the half coagulated blood creating a starchy glue like substance all over. The carpet was the worst. It was soggy from the bodily fluids that had gathered from the torn open corpses. Her feet made squishy sounds as she walked across it. When she reached the shoe rack, she grabbed a pair of clean sneakers. There was no way she'd walk around with her family's blood on her feet.

God was a bullet, but there was no mercy to be had. Capitalism run rampant. What is life? What is undeath? How could they possibly be told apart if the dead were still moving? Why did any of the thousands thoughts she were having matter? She sure didn't. Not anymore. As she made her way outside, into a day that was surprisingly beautiful, she let her brain do what it did. She thought of practical ethics. She took a spin around the concepts of equality and supposed that this was as good a way to end the patriarchy as any. How do we reach equality as human beings? The world has to stop being what it is, to change. The best way to do that is to disrupt it. Someone had. Something had and now she was nearing insanity with the consequences of that change. Shaking her head as if to dislodge the sticky thoughts from her brain, she lowered her head and opened the door, trying hard not to hear the scratching of nails against the floor boards, the soft dragging noise of entrails behind her. Took a deep breath, almost puked from the stench of it. Closed the door behind her for the last time, and by some stupid reflex she locked it. It felt like the tumblers falling into place was the end of her life. Maybe it was.

But the day was beautiful. The birds were chirping away in the trees, and the sun was shining from a clear blue sky. The clear air was liberating after the smell of death. The roses her mother had been so proud of were smelling sweet and clean. She bent down to breathe them in, hoping to dispel the image of her mother's eyes as they had opened, filmed over with cataracts. Her mother's teeth as they had sunk into her father's arm, ripped open her sister's face. The roses were suddenly cloyingly sweet. She backed away, scared of the memory.

She found the bike in the shed, and the bike cart. She put her backpack on the cart, the bat in the basket and started pushing the bike out on the driveway, out into the world. She almost stumbled on a bag lying on the tarmac. It was half open, full of cans and water bottles, a first aid kit. A gun. She remembered that she was hungry and almost delirious from thirst. But not until the bag had snagged around her ankle and made her stop. She picked up a bottle of water, placed the rest of the bag on her cart. She drank all of it in huge gulps, the first water she had had in a day, maybe more. Then she threw it up, because her stomach couldn't handle it. Rummaging through the bag for more water, she found a pack of hydration tablets. She dropped one in a fresh bottle of water and drank again. Carefully this time. As she drank, her mind started to return to her. She was in the suburbs of Atlanta, and she was in deep shit. The dead had come back to life and had eaten her whole family, her friends. She had hidden in a boarded up basement, her father pushing her in there with a backpack full of camping gear and some water, a piece of bread, and she had sat in there listening to the dead devouring the living, and she had thought of things that barely made sense. And now she was standing outside her home, a bike and a cart beside her, and she had to get out of the city before the city ate her alive. Grateful for the bag, she took stock of her surroundings. It was quiet. There were a few cars on the driveways and in the street. A paper was blowing around, making rustling noises, and there were a few corpses lying on the pavement, heads bashed in. Their hunger quieted. It was a beautiful place, a beautiful day. The sun was high in the sky and the air was clear and smelled of summer. Trees were green and verdant, not really caring about the dead things that walked among them, because trees never cared. She set out down the road, quietly pedaling her bike through the streets, out of the city, maybe to a better place. Maybe not


	2. Bullets and Scars

The first group she caught up with was small, tired and maybe a bit broken. It was a man, his wife and their teenage son. There was also the young man's girlfriend and a granny that didn't belong to any of them. She caught up with them a few weeks outside of Atlanta. They had a broken down car, too much luggage and more food than her. For a while, they were safe. Or maybe pretended to be safe, she wasn't sure.

She came across them as she was navigating the highway, trying to find her way across a traffic jam of epic proportions. The cars were piled up like a badly played session of Tetris, and the smell of hot rubber and asphalt was all over as she carefully tread her way through the dusty cars and the scattered and dried out husks of people who used to be alive once. There was junk spread all over the road. She ran into the group as she was considering why on earth people felt the need to throw things all over the road like that, and she felt a pang of longing for the days in spring when the streets were cleaned from gravel.

The apocalypse had not only made the world dead, it had made it messier. She hated a mess. Since she was not all there - her mind had taken a vacation after the short walk through the slaughterhouse she had called her home - she started cleaning up the road. It was slow and messy work. There weren't any garbage bags or dumpsters she could use, so she simply started stacking stuff in cars, picking up the odd can of food, bottle of aspirin and pack of band aids that she came across. She found a few t-shirts that were her size and figured she could do with some clean clothes as well. That particular area had been a luxury, but she'd also noticed that apart from smelling like death warmed over for a few weeks, she'd actually started to smell less and less of sweat. Provided she had some clean clothes.

As she was dragging a corpse to the side, an old voice called to her.  
"Hello? Hello, young lady?"  
She was completely thrown by being called "young lady", because that belonged to Before. This was After, and she had no idea that there were other people still alive. She straightened up and looked around. The mess of cars was still there. The bodies and junk strewn across the road was still there. And there was also an elderly woman standing in the road a little way off. She had hadn't been there a moment ago. Gabriella shook her head, afraid that it might be an illusion.   
"Young lady, are you alone? Would you like to join us? We're trying to get across this wreckage as well." The elderly woman sounded safe. Warm. Like home. Like the nightmare might be just that, a nightmare. She wasn't really thinking, back then. Primarily because people were still people. The gradual slip into barbarism hadn't really happened yet, and she certainly didn't have a reason for mistrust. Besides, the old woman looked like home, a safe place. She desperately needed a safe place.  
"Yes" she replied, "yes, I'd like to join you. Let me just get my bike."

She found the bike by the side of the road, where she had left it propped up against an old RV that had proved to be a bit of a treasure trove. Canned food, bottled water. Some candy. She could feel the sweat running down her back as she gripped the handlebars and started dragging the bike toward the old woman. She wished she could clean up a bit, but it was what it was. Somehow the apocalypse made her less neurotic about things like cleanliness.

That was the start of maybe a month or so of safety. They stuck together, camped out beside the highway, broke into the odd cabin on the way. They had no clear idea where they were going, maybe to a FEMA shelter or perhaps Fort Benning. They travelled until they found a nice house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by stone walls high enough that the dead were unable to scale them. For a while, things were good. They brought her back from her own head, had her thinking about herself as Gabriella again. The girlfriend called her Gabby, and it stuck.

Ben, the husband, died first in a misguided attempt to protect his wife from one of the freaks. They had been on a supply run, and the pharmacy had been full of dead ones. They didn't see them and so the wife had been grabbed, but he had been eaten.

The wife, Melanie, followed soon after, but she was killed by a can of bad food. She went out vomiting and bleeding, severely dehydrated. Melanie killed granny Friedman and Josie, the girlfriend, when she came back as one of the freaks. After that, Tom, the son, shot himself in the head having stolen Gabby's gun.

Gabby considered joining them, but she was sidelined by her second group as she was about to eat a bullet. They were a bunch of young men looking for what Gabby had. When she wouldn't give it to them, they took it by force. At first they were all nice about it, flirted with her, tried trading with her. When that didn't work (and to Gabby it was pretty clear that she didn't really have sex on her list of priorities) they attacked her one evening when she thought she was safe. She lost her name again for a while, retreated into her own head and her thoughts.

The time she spent with the Scars (apparently rapists needed a name for themselves) was hazy. She was mostly tied up, used and dragged along. She bit more than one of them, scratched the bearded man, Jake, so badly he got blood poisoning, and she was severely beaten by the gang more than once. She escaped from the Scars when she tore the ear off of one of them. He was so upset by the loss that he didn't tie her up properly. She snuck out during the night, stole back her backpack and all their food.

She stood over one of them, baby faced Dean, her gun held in her hand and pointing at his chest for a few moments before leaving. At that point she considered killing him by gut wound and letting him devour the rest of the Scars. Something stopped her, though. Regardless of what had happened to her, she was not a cold blooded killer. She settled for slashing their tires and stealing the gas along with the food and the best car they had. Gabby drove away from the safe house where she had spent a few weeks with a group she would have considered family if they'd had more time, and another group that had taught her what the world was like now.

She drove about four days before she ran out of gas. It was an anticlimactic affair. The car just stopped in the middle of the road, thankfully at the outskirts of a little mall. There were freaks here, but they were slow, rotted through and easy to get rid of. A store promised "everything you need for an active lifestyle" and it had most of the things she needed there. A new pack. Freeze dried food packs that had been scattered across the floor for some reason. Water filters for the outdoors. She even found a little camping stove that had been dented and flung aside.

She found another bike, a bike cart and some sort of will to carry on, even if it was just to find another box of cartridges to load her gun with. After the Scars, she set out alone. She saw people, but mostly from a distance. She saw the freaks - sometimes up close and personal - but mostly she stayed away from what had been population centers. In her experience, those were the worst. In her head she started to form some kind of plan. Canada sounded tempting to her, a huge stretch of land without much people in it. She was sure she could find an island, something, where she would be safe. So she set out north, looking for salvation, and maybe she'd find a safe place along the way.


	3. The Windmill

The third group was an accident. She didn't mean to join them, but they were well armed, and she had been alone for a while. They found her when she was trying to escape a pair of corpses by climbing a roof to a gas station. She'd dropped her bat, the knife had stuck in the head of a freak and she had no way to escape except up.

They were a group of ten soldiers, three women and seven men, rolling around in a truck with camouflage colors. They killed the lurkers underneath the roof of the gas station and asked her to come along with them. She politely declined after having reclaimed her bat and knife.   
"Come on," the woman she later learned was called Natalie said, "I need some more women to keep me company. All these dudes are bad for my complexion."  
One of the taller soldiers hissed and booed at that. Gabby found out his name was Anders later that afternoon. After they'd managed to outrun the horde. Gabby politely declined again, but their discussions were interrupted by a huge horde of corpses shuffling their way. Gabby barely had time to grab her pack and toss the bike and cart on to the truck before the horde was upon them.

They were about to be overrun when Gabby grabbed a grenade and tossed it straight into the horde, a horde that happened to be in the middle of the gas station. John, designated driver, floored it and with a few corpses on the windshield, exited the gas station with seconds to spare, as the exploding grenade tore into the propane tank and set off an explosion of epic proportions. They felt the shockwaves in the truck.

After that, the group of soldiers wouldn't let her go. Truth be told, Gabby didn't much want to go, but she was lonely, and they had her bike. Anders took a particular interest in her, and she had to admit that being wooed suited her. He brought Gabby small things from the supply runs they did out of an abandoned windmill. Books. Clean underwear. Ibuprofen and trinkets he found. She was flattered, and a little bit embarrassed, because he was so obvious about it and about how he felt. John and Gary ribbed him. Susie and Fran lived vicariously through her stories about what he'd done or said. About a stolen kiss here or there.

The windmill turned out to be the perfect building to hide away in. It was a post windmill, meaning it stood a few storeys off the ground. They'd devised a system of pulleys and ladders and blocked off the internal stairs at the bottom floor. This meant that they were about as safe from the freaks as they could be. The truck and Gabby's bike were parked outside. It wasn't the most comfortable place to live, it was drafty and the mill was noisy, but they had four floors on eleven people, and they were safe.

Gabby found that she could sleep for the first time after the turn. Her tent found a use as a provider of privacy. She, Anders and Jeremy slept in the grain loft. The women, Susie, Ben and Fran slept on the bottom floor. John, Matthew and Henry had the living quarters and Gary and Abigail slept in the mill room. There was an unspoken agreement that - should Gabby's and Anders's relationship take off - Jeremy would move down to Henry and John. Until then, Gabby's tent served as her room divider.

Anders's affections were different from the bartering the Scars had used as a way to get her to have sex with them. In the end, what they had wanted, they had taken from her, with no consideration for her. Anders was considerate. Quiet, trustworthy and sometimes maybe a bit over the top, but always aware of her reactions to his advances. She enjoyed it. Which is probably why she found herself inviting him in for an evening in her tent. They were celebrating the finding of rations and air beds in a close to pristine little shop that had been located in the basement of a villa.

Anders crawled into her tent and on to the squeaky air bed she'd picked out for herself. It took up much of the space she had available. He was tall enough that he couldn't sit comfortably except in the middle of the tent.  
"Is it okay If I lie down?" He was holding on to a rare treat, a meal that consisted of reconstituted meat and potatoes, enough for both of them. Gabby nodded her assent and he plopped down on his stomach on her bed and put the plate of hot food between them on a towel he had brought.  
"That's very considerate of you." Gabby said when she noticed. She didn't have the same issues with the height of the tent, but she lay down next to him anyway. He handed her a spork. "Wow. You're really busting out the restaurant experience, aren't you?"  
"Only the best for you, my lady." He smiled at her and started eating. Compared to the food they normally ate, the rations were really good. They let the food talk for a while. A voice from the outside, Jeremy, interrupted in the middle of their quiet meal. "I'm going to bed. Is it okay if I turn out the lights."  
Anders turned around on the now less squeaky mattress and stuck his head out the tent. "Sure. Okay if we keep the lights on until,we finish dinner?" Gabby heard him chuckle. "Sure, lover boy. Just so you know, that mattress is real squeaky."   
"Right. G'night Jeremy."  
""G'night Anders." Then in a slightly louder voice "G'night Gabby! Don't let him charm you with food!"  
"Too late!", she answered. "I'm all stuffed and cozy!"  
Jeremy sniggered at that. Gabby reached for the little hand cranked lantern she'd found on one of the runs and gave it some love before turning it on. Outside the tent, the darkness asserted itself, and they could hear Jeremy settle down on an equally squeaky mattress in his part of the room. They returned to eating and a low conversation and they'd finished before long, but Anders stayed in the tent. She rested her head on his arm while they just lay there talking about things. How they'd pictured the end of the world. Why the first sport to return would be baseball ("Everyone's been working on their swing for years now!"), and why the first thing she would raid would be a museum, and his would be a bathroom fixture store. She fell asleep on his arm, but not before she kissed him.

She spent the winter in the windmill, the group of soldiers always careful and meticulous about their planning and how they conducted themselves. Their raids were well organized and as quick as they could make them. Gabby almost forgot about her bike, she didn't really need it anymore. Anders continued to bring food to her tent about once a week. It turned into date night and goodnight kisses turned into make out sessions with the both of them barely containing their passion. Gabby was still reluctant to do more than kissing and cuddling, but eventually her need for sex outgrew her fears.

One evening she let him unbutton her shirt and remove it. She took off her bra on her own, and helped him out of his clothes. They made love on the squeaky mattress, and she fell asleep feeling safe for the first time since the turn. Anders held her while she drifted off to sleep, and let her wake up in his arms in the morning. They concluded that they were in love, and a series of giggly days, gossip with the girls and studied clearing of throats from the other soldiers when they were caught kissing ensued. The standing catch phrase was "take it to the tent!" When she and Anders were too cuddly.

They brought in more people. Susie, Ben and Fran moved one story up, and Gillian, Arthur and Rudy moved in to the bottom floor together with Rudy's son Clay and Gillian's sister Fiona. They fenced off an area for crops when they found the grain in the basement. Eventually, Gabby and Anders were an established couple. Jeremy didn't mind. Fiona moved up from the bottom floor to him. And when disaster struck, it hurt so bad that Gabby swore she'd never let herself be taken in by strangers ever again.


	4. Home Depot

She spent the winter in the windmill, the group of soldiers always careful and meticulous about their planning and how they conducted themselves. They brought in more people. Susie, Ben and Fran moved one story up, and Gillian, Arthur and Rudy moved in to the bottom floor together with Rudy's son Clay and Gillian's sister Fiona. They fenced off an area for crops when they found the grain in the basement. Eventually, Gabby and Anders were an established couple. Jeremy didn't mind. Fiona moved up from the bottom floor to Jeremy. They had a good winter. There were some close calls, a horde that shuffled past the windmill in the endless roaming for food, but the windmill kept them safe. There was no way any of the freaks could get up there. They built a fence around the vehicles to keep them safe, stole the supplies from a factory. It took a while, but eventually the area around the windmill was blocked off from corpses wandering too near.

They had a death. Susie got stuck when stepping through the floor of an abandoned building that had suffered water damage, and before they could get her out, she'd been bitten. They tried to amputate her leg, but she bled out. Henry sat with her outside the building in the truck as she died, the freaks pressing up against the windows behind him. She wasn't conscious when she passed away. Henry wouldn't leave her behind, so they drove with Susie in the back, John sitting next to them with a knife at the ready. Henry cried all the way back to the windmill, and when Susie opened her eyes, he told her he was sorry, and that he loved her, and that he'd never hurt her. And then he plunged the knife into her temple. They started the cemetery by the windmill that very day.

They were a tight knit group, so when disaster struck, it hurt so bad that Gabby swore she'd never let herself be taken in by strangers ever again.

It was winter when she split from the group. Ironically, it wasn't the dead that caused the split, it was jealousy. Fran had it in her mind that she wanted Anders, Anders wasn't interested, but Fran would hear none of it.

She started whispering behind Gabby's back, spreading rumors. Nothing specific, just talk about how Gabby behaved on runs with Fran, how she took all the best finds for herself and how she wouldn't share. Most of the people in the windmill paid no mind, but when resources started getting scarce the grumblings within the group got louder. Gabby got sick with a flu like cold that had her shivering in her bed. Anders tried to take care of her as best he could, but it meant one less person walking the perimeter or going on runs, one less person doing chores, one more mouth to feed.

Fran saw her chance and she took it, smuggling a few cans of soup into Gabby's tent when she was sleeping. Anders found them on return to the windmill, and they had a huge fight. Not between themselves, but between Anders and Gabby and the rest of the residents in the windmill. Gabby was still sick when it was decided that Anders and her should take off. A car was found, gas was scrounged up and Anders and Gabby were bundled into it with some provisions and a tearful farewell from Fran, who had already taken up with John.

Anders and Gabby exchanged the relative safety of the windmill with a dangerous world where there was no respite from the monsters. For a few weeks they got by by sleeping in shifts in the car, but when Gabby got better she saw the toll that leaving his friends had taken on Anders. One night while on watch, driving from one unsafe place to the other, she turned the car around and drove back to the windmill. She parked the car in the relatively safe area they called the garage, took her bike after making sure Anders was still sleeping and safely bundled up, and left.

She knew he'd never agree to being left behind by her, so she wrote him a note. It said something in the lines of "don't come looking for me, this is for the best", and she ended it with "I love you". Then she biked away, never looking back.

She had been on her own for a long time when she came across a shopping mall some ways outside of Washington DC. The winter had turned to a warm spring and early summer, much wanted after the cold winter.

The only reason she stopped at a place like that - dangerously risky - was because she'd gotten a flat on her bike and had had to use her last patch to fix it up again. The patch held for about five hours of biking, then it gave out. She had to drag the bike along for about an hour longer before she found the mall. There was a Home Depot shop there, and a sports store. She thought she'd be able to scrounge what she needed from there. Despite seeing a few freaks wandering around outside, she decided to risk it. She'd found a brand new aluminum bat that rested well in her small hands, and she also had a pocket full of ammo for her gun. The only problem was to stash the bike and her pack somewhere safe.

As she crossed the parking lot she found a gated alleyway between two shops. The space was full of outdoor furniture, so she suspected that it was either a restaurant or café, or a furniture store. The gate was unlocked, miracle of miracles, so she opened it and pulled the bike inside. It turned out to be an outdoor area for a restaurant with eclectic tastes in furnishings. The tables were mismatched, and so were the chairs and parasols. Wonder of wonders, the restaurant was empty of walking corpses, and she found a meat locker that closed and locked from the inside when she investigated the premises. She also found huge amounts of potato chips, dried out and rotted meat that had her gagging while she cleaned out the meat locker, and industrial sized cans of beans and corn. She kept the cans but dragged the meat outside. It took her the better part of three hours to clean out the locker and scavenge the restaurant for food and other useful items, but on the plus side, she had a safe place to spend the night and keep her bike away from scavengers.

She'd locked the gate with her bike chain, and had run the chain through the back wheel of the bike as well, securing it in place. She stashed her pack in the meat locker, which unfortunately still smelled like bad meat, but she figured that beggars couldn't be choosers.

When she was satisfied with her living quarters, Gabby set out to explore the mall. Her first stop was Home Depot, simply because it was the closest. She still hadn't seen any corpses around. It unsettled her. Normally there would be at least one or two freaks shuffling around a place like this.

The answer became apparent when she'd been walking through Home Depot for a little while. Before she reached the aisle where she suspected they may have stocked bike stuff, she heard bells tinkling merrily. The bells were accompanied by the shuffling of feet and moaning of the dead. As in huge numbers of feet. Sneaking a peek around the corner made her go all cold inside. There were at least two dozen of them there, and they were all gathered around a display of Christmas trees. One of the trees was decorated with tiny bells, and the corpses kept walking into it, setting the bells off. It kept the freaks busy, but it also blocked her from what she needed the most. Right next to the jingly Christmas tree, there was a display of bikes, some of which would have been excellent replacements for her old one.

As she turned to leave, her shirt got caught in a bucket of paint. With mounting horror she realized that the whole display of paint would be falling down, so she did the only thing she could think of - she helped tear it down between herself and the corpses. The crash reverberated through the store, and the relatively sedate freaks turned one by one, alerted by the noise. Gabby didn't stay to find out what they would do, she ran.

The moaning and shuffling horde was after her. The only thing she could think of doing was to run for the exit, hoping she'd be able to bar it from the freaks. She was getting close when a group of freaks stepped out right in front of her. She was surrounded, and she had no way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's about one more chapter before she meets Daryl and the gang, probably somewhere around when they've just started to settle in in Alexandria Safe Zone. Gabby will however have to fight off some walkers before then. The tone and address will change a bit with that meeting, previously it's just been summaries at best, to give our girl a bit of background, something to talk to Glenn, Maggie, Rick and Daryl about. I've also got something lined up for Carol in all this. Anyway. Sorry for being a quiet writer. I do appreciate your comments and kudos.


	5. High Life

Caught in the middle of the approaching herd Gabby did the only thing that made sense to her. She started climbing the huge shelves lining the store from one end to the other. As she started climbing, she felt her foot getting caught. Looking down, a corpse consisting of grey, dry flesh, face almost completely gone was holding on to her shoe. She tried shaking it off but it held on as the rest of the horde was approaching. It pulled at her. She lost her grip and slipped down a shelf, close enough to the corpse that it started gnawing on her shoe. The horde was closing in. One corpse was bad enough but she knew that if more caught on to her she'd be dead. It felt like ages as she hung there, trying to shake the skeletal thing that was determined to break through her sneaker with its teeth. Her hand found something on the shelf above her. A bag. It was heavy. She dragged it over the edge of the shelf, the other freaks almost there (some ludicrously covered in white paint) and dropped it in the head of the corpse that was trying to eat her foot.

Neck snapping and head caving in from the weight of the bag, it released her. It was in the nick of time. Another freak had just grabbed on to her pant leg as she found purchase on the shelves with her foot. She managed to shake it off and heaved herself up to safety. It was dusty at the top of the shelf, but the construction was sound. Apparently, building materials required sturdy shelving. Her foot was aching, so with some trepidation she took a look at it and at her shoe. Her foot was intact, but bruised, which was probably why it hurt. With some revulsion she realized that there were still teeth in the shoe. They'd been knocked out as the corpse got a head full of cement. She flopped down on her back, resting for a moment. Things had really not gone according to plan. Below her, the corpses were milling about moaning excitedly at the prospect of eating her. She took a look down and immediately wished she hadn't. There had to be at least thirty of them down there. All of them were looking up, stretching their hands above their heads, trying to reach her.

She sat there, cross legged and thirsty for a while. They couldn't reach her, so she wasn't worried. Well, scratch that. She wasn't terrified she'd die in the next ten minutes, which was about as good as it ever got. She started moving around on the shelf, clearing out the way. She dropped the heavy stuff on the freaks, getting some good hits. She was particularly proud of the cement bag that clocked two corpses. She did realize that the more sound she made, the likelier it was that more freaks would gather in the store. By now she'd figured out that they were coming from the back. Probably from an open loading bay or something. Or the garden area. She giggled at the thought of corpses buying soil, and considered the absurdity of finding even a little entertainment in her current situation. She supposed she'd gone a bit batty sitting on the highest shelf in Home Depot, throwing heavy objects at the living dead.

Her scouting did eventually pay off. She saw a ladder leading up to the roof walkway a few shelves down. The only problem now was how to get there. She crawled along the shelf, tipping heavy objects on the freaks following her progress and tried to think of how to cross the shelves without risking getting down among the hungry masses. Her answer came to her as she was about to chuck yet another heavy package down on the moaning horde below. It was a ladder. A ladder that extended.

She unpacked it as quickly as she could, took a look at it and decided that the aluminum frame would probably hold her weight. She'd still be stuck, even if it didn't. She cleared some more shelf space and was happy to determine that the horde below her was thinner, even if it was still dangerously numerous to take on alone. With a few swift moves she extended the ladder along the shelf. She had no way of knowing if it'd be long enough, but she figured she had to try.

Heaving the ladder across the aisles was trickier than she had anticipated, but it was more than long enough to rest securely between the shelves. She swallowed nervously, dried her sweaty hands on her pants and carefully crawled out, only a thin frame between her and death. Gabby had no doubt that a fall from this height would incapacitate her. That would be lethal. The crawl across the aisle was the longest distance she had ever traversed. The ladder was relatively light, and it shuddered and creaked underneath her. Gabby almost lost her balance once, and had to lie down a bit. The corpses beneath her followed her progress with great interest. When she was finally across, she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. She was soaked in sweat, both from terror and the strain. At least now she knew the ladder would hold. She also knew she had to do this twice more to get to the shelf from where she could reach the walkway. Progress was slow and the ladder was really heavy to swing across the space between the shelves. It must have taken her a few hours just to cross a few feet. By the time she was on the right shelf, she was shaking and sweating, her mouth dry from dehydration and exhaustion. She could reach the walkway from the end of the shelf, but she'd need to be at least somewhat rested for that. Dropping toilet bowls and basins on the creatures below, she cleared enough space that she could lie down for a little while. She scrunched up some packing paper to form a pillow, and went to sleep.

Gabby woke up a few hours later, cold and dry mouthed. Her back and arms were aching, but she knew she had to try to get out. Gripping the lower rungs of the walkway she tried dragging herself up, but it was no use. She was just too tired. The walkway passed over the shelf, but not directly. Gabby considered using the ladder to reach, but there was no way of telling that it would stay in place while she climbed.

She considered her options. She was on a top shelf with basins and toilets. Perhaps they would be heavy enough to keep the ladder in place for her to climb? Said and done, Gabby started building using the cardboard wrapped toilet seats as a counter weight. It took another few hours. When she was ready to climb, the store was dark. With trembling hands and knees, Gabby quickly climbed across the space between her and the walkway, barely reaching it and grabbing on before the construction she had built from various bathroom porcelain started sliding, and the ladder with it. She managed to grab on to the ladder and pull it in before it too was lost. Who knew? She might need it.

As it turned out, the walkway led to the skylights, and the skylights could be opened without much trouble. She found herself on the roof of Home Depot, and after some searching, she found a fire escape at the back of the store. It was clear of freaks down there so she climbed down, carefully. She gave the ladder a kiss before leaving it behind. It had served her well, after all. As her feet touched the ground she felt ready to collapse. Any corpses wanting to eat her would have an easy time of it. Despite being probably the most tired she had ever been in her life, she ran towards the restaurant and sighed in relief when she found it untouched and free of the dead. Despite that, she blocked the door to the restaurant.

She risked heating some food on her camping stove, ate while the food was too hot, drank two bottles of water, brushed her teeth and went to bed in the meat locker she had cleaned out. It still stank, but not as bad as it had been. It was safer than staying outside. She cranked her lantern, made her bed as comfy as she could, closed and locked the door to the meat locker and fell asleep, quicker than she thought possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I actually do think about when visiting home improvement stores. How perfect they are for problem solving the zombie apocalypse. Next chapter sees Rick and Daryl make an appearance. Also, this story will not have a happy ending, but I suppose that comes with the territory.


	6. The Meat Locker

She woke up the next morning with a crossbow in her face and a crick in her neck. Sleep had been fitful and packed with nightmares, where her bitten father had not pushed her into the basement, but devoured her alive much as he had been devoured so long ago. If it was long ago. She had no idea but it felt like decades, centuries. It felt like yesterday. She had lost track of time. She didn't know what day it was, what year, what month. She did know that the dead were unable to open doors, or to hold crossbows. She wasn't afraid, and that was a new feeling to wake up to. But she was confused. What the hell? The door had been locked.  
"What..." her voice was hoarse. She hadn't used it for a long time, and she barely knew how anymore.  
"Who are you? What'cha doin' here?" The voice belonging to the man holding the crossbow was soft and young, belied by his weathered face and dirty arms. A mop of unkempt dark hair almost hid his eyes, and he was scowling at her as if she'd done something wrong purely by existing in the same space as him. He had gone down on his haunches to poke her, wake her up. He was massive in the small space she had carefully cleaned out and made her own for the night.  
She coughed, reached for the water next to her makeshift bed. He let her pick up the bottle and she took a few sips.   
"I'm Gabby. I was sleeping..." her voice had improved slightly, but she was still hoarse, still unused to talking to anybody except herself.  
The man kept scowling at her, but he transferred his crossbow to his back, leaned back a bit in the crowded space.  
"How come you sleep in a meat locker?"  
"It was the only safe place here. How did you get the door open? I locked it."  
"Picked it. Wasn’t exactly safe as locks go. Lookin' for food. Smells like ass 'n here."  
"The whole world smells like ass nowadays."  
He snorted at that, lowered the crossbow and turning around a bit shouted to someone behind him. "Hey Rick! I found 'un!" While the unkempt man had his back to her, Gabby managed to grab her gun, cock it and aim it at him. He turned back at the sound and raised his eyebrow.   
"It's gonna be like that, huh?"  
"Yup. That's how it's going to be. Now back off."  
The man raised his arms, got up and took a few steps back. Another man came into view. He was slimmer, less massive, and definitely less dirty. His voice was also soft, but not as young as the other man's. She assumed that this was Rick, and her assumptions were confirmed when the man who found her spoke again.  
"This is Rick. I'm Daryl. Rick, this here's Gabby."  
She shifted slightly in her sleeping bag and made sure to cover them both.  
"Look Gabby," the man called Rick said. "I can see we might have gotten off on the wrong foot here, but we mean you no harm. In fact, we may be able to help. We have a group, a community. If you're willing to answer some questions, we might be able to take you in."  
"I'm not looking for company", she said. "I've been in groups before. They all die. Or they abandon you. Sooner or later."  
Rick traded glances with the man who had introduced himself as Daryl.   
Daryl spoke up. Softly.  
"How many walkers you killed?" She thought for a while on that. Silently counting every time she had bashed a head in, swung her bat, knifed one of them. Dropped a toilet on one. She found out that she knew exactly how many, but that she didn't much want or need that knowledge.  
"I don't know. I blew up a gas station once to get away from the horde. Apart from that, maybe 20. Maybe 30."  
"You blew up a gas station?" Daryl's voice was incredulous, his eyebrows disappearing into the mop of dark hair. "How'd ya swing that?"  
"I found a grenade." Another quick exchange of glances between the men.  
"How many people you killed?" His voice was even softer now, as if to counter his messy exterior. Before the world died she would have liked that. Before the world died she would have trusted him, his friend, just because they were people. But the world had died, and the people who survived were not like the people before. They took on an edge, a shade of danger, violence. Mistrust. Not because they wanted, not all of them, but because they had to. And so Gabby was not swayed by his soft voice.   
"None. I don't kill people." They looked at each other, his sullen face was skeptical, as if he couldn't or wouldn't believe her, and she was staring holes into him. She felt something pass between them with that intense gaze, but she was uncertain of what it was, just that it made her nervous and uneasy. She had no idea what was going on, what just happened.  
"None?" As if wanting confirmation from her, maybe catching her at a lie.  
"No. I. Don't. Kill. People." She said it word for word, as if emphasizing the words would make it more true. But it was true. She didn't kill people. Those of the living she had left to die she no longer categorized as people. A small voice whispered in her head that that, that right there, that thought- that was the start of evil. She whispered back to herself that the world had ended. Evil didn't exist anymore. For there to be evil, there had to be civilization. She was brought out of her thoughts by him again. Anchoring her to the here and now with his voice.  
"Why?" So soft, with that southern twang.  
"Because I made a choice not to. I run, I hide, but I never kill." He held her eyes for a few moments more, then he turned to his companion who had been watching the exchange closely. "So?" The question in Daryl's voice was unmistakable. This was a test of some kind and she had passed it, at least where Daryl was concerned.  
"Yeah," Rick said, kind of slowly, as if stepping over a threshold. "Yeah, if she wants to, she's in." He turned away from the doorway and continued back into the restaurant, leaving Daryl to deal with her. They stayed like that for a little while. Him looking at her, her looking at him, trying to gauge each other and what the hell had passed between them, but as it turned out, Daryl was just as good at being quiet as she was.

She broke the silence and the stand off by lowering her gun and standing up in the small space she had made for herself. She didn't feel particularly threatened by the man in front of her. It felt a bit strange but she'd learned to trust her gut with these things.  
"Could you move? Need to pack my stuff. You're standing on it."   
He looked away at that and she could have sworn his cheeks tinged a bit with red, but it was hard to tell in the darkness of the meat locker. He took a few steps out, still keeping his eyes on her as she packed everything up in her backpack, meticulous as always.   
"Thanks", she said as she walked past him out into the restaurant. He put his hand on her shoulder, stopping her from just walking away.  
"Come on. Come with us. Just for a while. You don't like it, you're free to leave."  
She stood there feeling his touch on her shoulder, that feather light connection she hadn't felt for ages. Her heart stung at the thought of it. Anders. Left behind because of a scheming, manipulative bitch. Something small broke in her. The realization that she needed other people hurt. She knew she'd go with them, but she had to put up at least a bit of a fight. Not for him. For herself, for her own pride.  
"I need to fix my bike. I need a new tire or a repair patch. I need my bike."  
He broke away first. Dropped his hand from her shoulder and she felt so much lighter, untethered. And so empty.  
"Right, help you look." He said.   
"Sorry for the gun."  
"S'okay. Had worse. Least it wasn't a grenade." She looked up at him at that, caught a little smirk on his lips. She kept her eyes on him, watching him. A shadow must have passed over her face, because his hand was there again, steadying her. "S'okay. Just jokin around." Another one of those weird moments happened. Gabby felt they could have stood there forever but Rick was calling in a low voice from the restaurant.  
"Come on, we need to get out of here."  
He was right. She really did need to get out of there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finding voices for Rick and Daryl is not exactly easy. Oh well. Updating might be a bit slower moving forward, not because I don't want to, but because Christmas and deadlines and general angst.


	7. Why'd we need rope?

The hunt for a repair patch or a wheel eventually brought them back to Home Depot. The sports store was a dud, completely picked over by looters. They found some rope, and even though Daryl protested ("What the fuck do we need rope for?"), Rick picked it up and stashed it in his backpack.  
"Looks like it's been picked clean." Rick took another look around in the ransacked store, then he shrugged and turned to leave. One of the changing booths rattled, the easily recognizable wheeze of the dead was heard over the sudden silence. Rick gave her a look. "You ok there?" She nodded briefly, her focus on the half dressed woman scrabbling her way out of the booth. There was the sound of a string being released, followed by a thick thwack that put an end to the remnants of the person that had died in that booth. Daryl walked over, pulled the arrow and wiped it off on his pants.  
Gabby found herself slightly disgusted by it. Both him and Rick seemed unconcerned by getting dirty. She was surprised at herself, her reactions. The one thing Gabby missed more than anything after the world had gone to shit was the ability to wash her hands when she wanted. She sighed. Daryl threw her a glance. "What?"  
"Nothing, I just..."  
"Just what?" He spat the words out. For a moment Gabby wondered what she'd done wrong.  
"It's nothing. I was just thinking about how much I miss showers, you know?" He scoffed and put the arrow back in the crossbow.  
"No, I don't." He sounded stand offish, angry. They were staring at each other, and she had no idea why. Rick broke into another one of those weird moments by walking past, putting a hand on Daryl's shoulder. "C'mon, lets go. Nothin' left here."  
Gabby considered the truth of those words. There was truly nothing left here, but where Rick might have meant the store, Gabby thought about the world.  
"Where to next?" Rick caught her attention. Gabby blinked a few times. "Home Depot", she said.  
"Didn't you say that was full of walkers?"  
"Yeah. Maybe a dozen or so. Maybe less. I dropped a toilet on a few of them." Daryl's eyes went a bit wide at that. "First you're blowing up gas stations and then you're using toilets as weaponry. You don't kid around, do ya?"  
"It was there."  
"Right."

  
They were walking across the parking lot towards Home Depot when the first set of freaks came at them. There was a woman in a flowery dress. The dress had been ripped open in the front, exposing her desiccated breasts and a stomach that had been ripped open and eviscerated. She was staggering as she walked, lopsided and half broken. The kid that was accompanying her was just as bad. Scrawny and with the flesh torn from his face, half his jaw exposed. Their flesh was dry and flaky, falling off in places as they both made their way towards the living trio. Rick pulled his knife, walking slightly sideways towards the woman. Daryl had already unslung his crossbow and was aiming at the boy. Rick took a few steps forward and plunged the knife into the brain of the woman. Thick viscous blood and rotted brain matter spurted from the skull when he pulled the knife out. His whole hand was covered in goo. Just as the boy was about to reach him there was another thwack as Daryl's arrow hit the boy between his eyes. Rick scoffed. "Show off." Daryl sniggered, pulled the arrow out and cleaned it.

  
"Where was it ya thought the walkers got in?"  
"The back. I think someone must have left a door open."  
They made their way to the back, killing walkers as they went. Gabby stabbed one in the temple. Daryl shot a couple. Rick broke a knee on one and shoved the knife into the crown of its head.while it was still chewing the air, trying to feed. It was different, walking around with these two men. They knew how to handle themselves and they weren't afraid. It was as if they knew the risks, knew how to offset them, understood the playing field. She was considering if she was actually feeling safe, when she felt the iron grip of a dead person around her ankle. The freak pulled at her leg, and she lost her footing. Gabby went down hard, her skull cracking against the asphalt. She bit her tongue, badly, and started spitting blood in the middle of everything. The world was spinning, and the corpse that had lain hidden under a pile of cardboard was dragging itself up along her leg, just waiting to feed.

  
Before either Daryl or Rick had the chance, Gabby put just about everything she had in a downward kick aimed at the head of the freak. She could feel the skull cracking as her combat boot made contact with it. The grip loosened, and she could wiggle free. When she tried to stand, she promptly fell to her knees and puked all over the parking lot.  
"Whoa! Shit, that was a nasty fall!" Rick was helping her sit up properly, arm around her shoulder. "You okay?"  
"Head hurts real bad" she said as she felt the back of her head. Her fingers came back bloody, and her tongue was starting to feel swollen where she'd bit down on it. She spat, all bright red. "I bit my tongue and I think I almost scalped m... Oh shit..." she leaned away from Rick and vomited again.

  
When she was done heaving she could feel Daryl's hands holding on to her head and gently probing and moving hair out of the way to see how bad it was.  
"Yeah, this'll need stitches", he said. "It's a real bad cut you got."  
"I feel sick..."  
"It's probably a concussion." Daryl again. "I've had a few. You're s'pposed to stay awake."  
"We need to get you back to Alexandria." Rick this time. "C'mon, we'll pick up your bike on the way back."  
Returning to the car was all a blur for Gabby. Her head was spinning and she felt nauseous. She'd thrown up four times by the time they'd arrived, and she could feel the bile burning her wounded tongue each time. Rick took the wheel. After some discussion, Daryl persuaded her not to lie down, no matter how tempting. He was also to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't fall asleep until they were at the safe zone. He seemed to know much about head injuries and concussions, but she didn't question him. In fact she had a hard time staying awake. Her head was still bleeding, and she'd ransacked her pack for something to keep it from messing up the whole car. She had an old shirt stuck to the wound.  
"Hey. Hey! Gabby! Look at me."  
Her eyes were heavy and she had no idea she'd closed them until she could feel a light slap on her cheek. She opened them with difficulty, barely seeing anything.  
"That's m' girl. Stay with us, ok?"  
Gabby nodded weakly, instantly regretted it and almost threw up again. Except of course there was nothing left to throw up, so she just got a bad taste in her mouth.  
"She okay?" Rick kept his eyes on the road, scanning for god knows what.  
"Nah. She's real pale. Don't look like she's all here. I think she's still bleedin' too."  
"We're almost there Gabby. Just keep it together for a little bit longer."  
Sure, she could do that. She could keep it together. Those were her last thoughts before she was woken up by being manhandled out of the car and dragged up a some steps into what seemed to be a very white, very clean room. She thought she'd died and gone to heaven or something, so she asked for her father.  
"Is dad here? Do corpses go to heaven?"  
"She's been totally out of it for the last fifteen minutes. I tried keepin' her awake, but she's not all there."  
"We'll worry about that later. We just need to stop this bleeding."  
"Honey, look at me. A blond girl was standing in front of her, gripping her chin and shining lights into her eyes. "What's her name?"  
"Gabby."  
"Gabby. Gabby look at me."  
With great effort, Gabby focused on the woman in front of her. "That's it. We're going to need to stitch you up. I don't have any local anesthetics, so it's going to hurt, okay?"  
"Okay." Her own voice sounded far off. Like she was surrounded by cotton wool. She was directed to a chair. Her head fell forward and she passed out again.


	8. EMT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for some reason, Gabby ended up being an EMT. I'm not sure why that happened yet, but I'll figure it out, I hope. She'll also be having nightmares and I'm not sure she'll survive yet, but I hope so. This is writing itself in many ways, and you might find some minor canon divergences, mainly because I was so depressed that the group couldn't catch a break, even in Alexandria. I can't even watch the 7:th season because it's so depressing. Anyway. Some alone time coming up.

Gabby woke up in a bright room, on a clean bed, with clean sheets and no funky smells anywhere. For a brief moment she thought she was at home again, safe in her own bed, but then the pain hit. Her head was aching worse than it ever had. It felt like someone had shoved a red hot ball of lead into her brain. She moaned quietly, and as she did, a young woman appeared by her bedside. "Hey. Welcome back. Here, sit up." The woman helped her into a sitting position that did nothing for the ball of red hot lead. Gabby's shoulders tensed up, and another spike of sharp pain lanced through the back of her head and neck.  
"Take these. I imagine you're having a headache." The blonde girl in glasses had a couple of pills in her one hand and a glass of water in the other.  
"Where am I? Who are you?" Gabby's voice was hoarse and her throat was dry. She took the glass and sipped on the water, but left the pills. Even drinking hurt.  
"Oh! Sorry. I'm Denise, and you're in Alexandria. It's a safe zone. Daryl and Rick brought you in yesterday. You've sustained a bad concussion, and you have a big cut in the back of your head. I've patched you up as well as I can. I don't think your skull is fractured, but it's hard to say without an x ray. You really should take the pills. They'll help with the headache. How's your vision?" Gabby was slightly stunned by the barrage of words. She took the pills from Denise's outstretched hand, swallowed them with some of the water.  
"Everything's a bit blurry."  
"Do you remember anything at all from the time you arrived here?" Denise looked concerned.  
"No, just you saying you were going to stitch my head up, after that it's all a blank." Denise put a hand on Gabby's forehead. "Well, you don't have a fever. Are you feeling sick at all?"  
"Just a bit from the headache." Denise had picked up a penlight and took a gentle hold of Gabby's chin. "This might be a bit uncomfortable, but I need to check your pupillary responses", she said and started shifting the light back and forth from Gabby's eyes.  
"Ow, yeah." The light was pretty painful, but apparently Denise liked what she saw, because her shoulders dropped some of the tension they'd been holding.  
"So far you seem okay. You were a bit confused when you arrived, and you've been unconscious since yesterday afternoon, but that might also have been exhaustion and malnutrition. I think you should stay here and rest until your headache clears up, but then you'll be free to go. I'm sure Deanna wants to talk to you, and we have a house set up with all your stuff."  
Gabby was too tired to argue so she just nodded and slipped back down into bed.  
"Get some sleep. You'll feel better once you've rested. I'll check on you in a bit, okay?"  
Gabby mumbled something in response and then promptly fell back to sleep.

The next time she woke up, an unknown woman was sitting by her bed. She had short grey hair, kind eyes and a warm smile. "Good morning", se said when she realized Gabby was awake. "I'm Carol. I heard Daryl and Rick found you on one of their trips. How's your head sweetie?"  
"Like syrup", she sat up in the bed. "Where's Denise?"  
"Are you feeling sick?" Carol had a look of concern on her face.  
"No, but I have a real nasty headache", her hand went to the back of her head and came back somewhat sticky "and I think the bandages need changing."  
"Here, let me take a look." Carol gestured for her to turn around. Gabby eyed her for several moments. Carol was all sunshine, but Gabby had a sense there was more to this woman than met the eye, and she wasn't sure she wanted to turn her back towards her without knowing what that was about. Before Carol could say anything else, Denise was back in the room with some pills and a bowl.  
"You're awake! Welcome back. How's your head?"  
"Slow. I feel like my mind is wrapped in cotton."  
"That's not uncommon with head injuries. Rick told me you threw up quite a bit. Do you remember?"  
"Yeah, about four times or so. I didn't exactly feel like counting."  
Denise got the worried look back on her face. She stood across from Gabby, picked up the penlight and did another examination of Gabby's eyes. "Well, your pupillary response is a bit slow, but not exaggerated. Some cognitive impairment. Does the light bother you?"  
"A bit. Feels very strong, and I've got a pretty bad headache."  
"Where? Back of the head, front? Temples?" Gabby tried to locate the origin of the pain. Everything hurt. "Mostly back. Probably from the wound."  
"Okay, let me take a look. Carol, since you're here, could you get some fresh bandages? Over at the cabinet." Carol got up and started getting supplies together. Denise took the old bandages off. Gabby could hear her suck in a breath. "Okay, Carol, could you get some boiled water and a pack of salt? We must have left some dirt in there, so we need to irrigate and... how's our antibiotic supply? Do we have any Keflex left?"  
Denise was gently probing the cut but it felt intensely painful. Gabby was gritting her teeth when Denise rattled off her list. "It's infected?"  
"Yeah, looks that way, but it's superficial."  
"I've got some cefoxitin in my pack. Grabbed it from the hospital when I left. I think there's some cipro in there as well. Some amoxicillin too."  
"How come you run around with antibiotics in your pack?" Carol stood in front of her, hands on her hips. "Used to be an EMT. Raided the pharmacy at the station before I left. Haven't needed any of the antibiotics yet, but I figured they'd come in handy. Best before date is probably long gone, but it's better than nothing."  
Carol turned to leave.  
"Carol, could you check with Daryl, see if they're doing another run soon. We need more dressings."  
"Sure. I'll be right back with the water." Carol left the infirmary, a slight sway in her step. Gabby focused on not passing out as Denise started removing the stitches.  
"So you were an EMT?"  
"Yeah. Atlanta. Did a tour as a combat medic as well." Gabby fiddled with her hands, hissing as Denise gently opened the wound. "Oh, this looks good, considering. And you're hired."  
"Hired for what?"  
"I need more help in here. Two of us, we can teach each other. Let's just make sure you survive this head wound."

A few days later Gabby was officially back on her feet. The antibiotics took care of her infection and time took care of her concussion. She met with Deanne, a surreal meeting that took a lot out of her. Reliving the horror of her family falling one by one to the virus was food for her nightmares. Strangely enough it also felt good to offload in front of the cameras. Deanne was sympathetic, especially after the loss of her husband. They cried a bit together, a strange experience for Gabby. She didn't know this woman, but they had a connection through their grief - for the world and for their loved ones. Alexandria took her in and she found herself being recruited to the infirmary as support for Denise. She gave away her stash of antibiotics to the colony, and in return she was given a house in the compound. She spent her nights sitting on the porch, alone, keeping her many nightmares at bay. Sometimes Daryl ambled past on a night patrol, waved or nodded at her. Sometimes it was Rick.

Denise spent some time trying to get to know her, which was why she found herself recruited in Denise's quest to find pop for Tara and as a medical advisor for Daryl as he did a run a bit farther out. They needed to find a hospital or a drug store to improve their ability to handle emergencies. Gabby had her mind set on finding a working defibrillator, something Daryl had only grunted at when she suggested it. She brought her backpack and a sleeping bag to the truck they were taking. Rick and Daryl were plotting their course on a map when she arrived. She stashed her pack before she joined them at the hood of the car. Daryl was chewing his thumbnail, looking vaguely uncomfortable.  
"That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying maybe this isn't the best run to bring Gabby. We've never been out together. You, Aaron. I know you."  
"We need the meds and she knows what to look for. I don't get it..." Rick trailed off as Gabby stepped into view, slamming the trunk of the car shut. Daryl kept chewing his thumb and Rick looked slightly guilty.  
"It's okay, I get it. I'll have your back Daryl, or I'll try to. Promise not to fall down on the job again. Lesson learned." Gabby felt the back of her head, the wound still not completely healed. Daryl seemed to reach some sort of decision. He let his hand fall, unslung his crossbow and stashed it in the car together with a worn bag. "Well. I guess Rick said it. We need the equipment."  
"Alright, so this is where you're going..."  
Rick showed her the route they'd plotted, a two or three day trip out the suburbs of Washington. They were hoping to find something not entirely picked clean. The crews from Alexandria hadn't been there for a while, writing it off as already looted. Rick and Daryl had discussed it with Deanna, pointing out that the crews that used to do runs weren't the most efficient. Deanna concurred. Dangerous but not undoable. They discussed priorities and strategies for about another half hour during which time a number of the people in Alexandria brought them lists and good luck wishes. Gabby was watching how everyone interacted with Daryl. He was respected in the group, someone they looked up to. Carol came by with her own list and took Daryl aside. She smoothed the hair out of his face, gave him a kiss on the forehead and smiled at him in a way that had Gabby feeling annoyed for some reason. All goodbyes said, the car rumbled out of Alexandria early morning, destined for the outskirts of Washington.


	9. The Smell of Corpses

They spent the first few miles in silence. Daryl was driving, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hanging out of the rolled down window. He was smoking, taking slow drags on his cigarette and blowing the smoke out the window.

Gabby was trying to relax, eyes closed and leaning back on the headrest. She was almost asleep when Daryl spoke. "So, ya still leavin'? Seems like you've settled." She kept her eyes closed, smelling the smoke and Daryl's unmistakable scent of dirt and greenery. "I don't know." She was drawling a bit from fatigue. Ever since the head injury she'd been tired. "I think I need to get my head on straight first. Rest up a bit."  
"Might be easier if ya slept." Daryl sounded confrontational, but Gabby was too tired to care. "What do you mean by that?"  
"Been seein' ya at night, sittin' on that porch. Rick too, and Carol. Why ya ain't sleepin'?" Gabby opened her eyes, sat up straight in the car seat and turned to Daryl. He was watching her closely, cigarette still dangling from his lips. He had both hands on the wheel, but he wasn't really paying attention to the road. It was empty anyway.  
"Have you been watching me?" Gabby felt a bit upset at the idea that she'd been spied on. As if she couldn't be trusted.  
"Nah," he said and looked at the road again, "but you've been up every one of my shifts, and Rick told me he'd seen ya awake too. And Carol. Just concerned 's all. Was thinkin' maybe it was your head." He shot her a slightly worried look.  
"My head is fine. It's just the nightmares."  
"What kind?"  
"Excuse me?"  
"What kind of nightmares ya got?" Daryl threw the cigarette butt out the window and looked at her sideways, both hands still on the wheel. She was quiet for a while.  
"I'm being eaten alive."  
He grunted at that and seemed satisfied with the answer. "Not sleepin' makes 'em worse. Try."  
They both fell quiet after that. The road was empty, some walkers here and there, but not much else.

They reached their first destination late in the afternoon. A suburb with a quaint small town feel to it. The only thing marring the perfect exterior were the corpses strewn across the sidewalks and the road. Daryl stopped the car outside a hunting store, and they both went to the door. Two knocks had three freaks approaching from the store interior.  
"Stand behind the door. Open for one at a time." Daryl took position a few steps back. Crossbow aimed at the door. Gabby pulled her knife and opened the door to let the first one out. The three of them were shuffling and moaning. The first one out was a man with what had once been a truly impressive beard. Some of it had fallen off, but what remained reached his waist. He was dressed in a checkered shirt and black jeans and he had a hunting rifle on his back. As soon as he was out, Gabby closed the door on the remaining two walkers. Daryl put an arrow between the corpse's eyes and picked the rifle off the back of the it. He pulled the arrow, put the rifle down at his feet, reloaded the crossbow and nodded to Gabby. She opened the door again. This time it was a big man with fancy clothes coming out the door. The distended belly of the walker was barely held together by the garish black cowboy shirt he was wearing.  
"Ugh, this one's ripe." Daryl made a face as he let the arrow fly. The belly of the dead man burst open as he impacted with the asphalt and a stench of rot and decomposition quickly spread across the parking lot. Both Gabby and Daryl gagged at the fetid odors, and before Daryl could walk up to the corpse to pull the arrow Gabby shouted at him "don't step in the goo! It'll stick to your boots, and you'll never get the smell out!" He grunted and nodded and carefully stepped around the body to retrieve the arrow.

The final corpse was a little old lady with a handbag dangling around her neck like a noose. She was desiccated and dry, as if she'd been holed up in a desert for her entire life. Gabby stabbed her in the back of the head, since the walker had trouble getting out of the doorway. Her handbag got stuck on the handle.

When the walkers had been dealt with, both Daryl and Gabby entered the store. They carefully circled around the place. It had been looted, but there were still useful things spread around. Gabby picked up a backpack and started filling it with stuff like sharpening steels, gun oil and other maintenance items. Daryl found a rack of arrows and an abandoned .22 caliber rifle that was in the process of being assembled or dismantled. He quickly put it together behind the counter. There was a safe in the back room, and after some snooping around in the office, Gabby found the combination. The safe opened and they found $20.000 plus a stack of ammo. None for the rifle Daryl had put together though. Gabby stuffed it in her bag. They did a last circuit of the store. Gabby put some oversized clothes that were still hanging on the racks in the backpack, and then they left the same way they came in. Both of them avoided the split open corpse in the doorway. The mood had lifted as they made their way back to the car. The haul from the hunting store was good enough that the trip was already a success.

Evening was fast approaching though. "We need to find some place to hole up." Daryl was looking around for a suitable camp for the night.  
"Could use the car?" Gabby stashed the bag in the back.  
"Yeah, but it's vulnerable. Rather find somethin' indoors." He was chewing his thumb thoughtfully. They got in and started cruising carefully through the little suburb. There were a few scattered corpses ambling around, but none of them paid them any attention more than lifting their heads and changing direction. They had their answer when they reached a gated community. The gates were open, but each house had their own fence. Daryl wired the gates shut and they took care of the stragglers that were moving through the streets before deciding on one of the smaller houses. It was a brick building with a sturdy brick wall at chest height running the length of the garden. The bricks were topped with an iron fence, making it impossible for walkers to get past it, something made obvious by the snarling corpses they found on the inside of the gate.

They poked their weapons through the wrought iron gate. The walkers were easy pickings. When they were all dispatched they opened the gates and dragged the dead bodies out on the street before putting the car in the driveway. They locked the gate behind them and made their way to the little house. The front door was open, and the four walkers that had been outside seemed to be all the house had to offer. Regardless they did a pass of the house and the gardens behind it. They found a pool full of rainwater and decomposing leaves in the back. In the kitchen they found a gas range and some cans of ravioli. Gabby set out to cook them some dinner while Daryl figured out the sleeping arrangements. They found a stash of candles and a lighter. Daryl put some of the candles up in the living room, some in the kitchen. While Gabby cooked, Daryl found them some sheets and a few blankets to bed down in. He put them on the couches, and then he checked on Gabby in the kitchen. Food was done so they sat down to eat.

They ate mostly in silence, Daryl shoveling the foot into his mouth as if he'd never see another meal. Gabby picked at her ravioli. It had never been her favorite, and she wasn't very hungry. Hadn't been since the head injury. She brought the plate with her into the living room where she finished it, sitting on the couch.  
"I'll take first watch", she said. "You've been driving all day."  
"Alright." Daryl looked around a bit and then plopped down on the other couch. "Wake me in four hours." He turned over and went to sleep, arm slung over his eyes. The house was quiet apart from Daryl's deep breathing. Gabby spent the night staring into nothing and thinking about her dead father, and what to do when she lost these people as well. She wasn't sure she'd be able to survive it.


	10. Gauze

Around two in the morning Daryl woke up on his own. His breathing got shallower, he twitched and then sat straight up in the couch looking around. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair and coughed a few times then cleared his throat.  
"Hey," Gabby said. "I was just about to wake you up."  
"No need. 'M up now. Be right back." Daryl ambled out of the room and the house, presumably to take care of business. Gabby sat on the couch wondering if she'd dare sleep. When Anders had been around the nightmares hadn't been so bad. Maybe it'd be enough to have someone there? Daryl came back in sniffed a bit and told her to try and sleep. She went over to the couch where Daryl had slept and arranged the blankets. The fatigue hit her as she sat down on the couch. It had been quite a while since she slept properly. She laid down and turned her back to the room, closed her eyes. The darkness dragged her down and before she lost consciousness she remembered thinking "this is going to be bad."

Someone was with her in the room, looming at the foot of the couch and breathing foul air across her feet and legs. It was there and it was evil. She knew it was evil, but she couldn't move. As the creature started crawling up the couch she tried to scream, but all she could manage were whimpers, breathing air through vocal cords that would not respond. Was she dead? She couldn't move. She might be dead. But then she realized her heart was hammering against her chest and she was so scared, so terrified of the creature slowly moving up her body. It was like a spectre of everything she feared, everything she didn't want to become. With a certainty stronger than bedrock she knew she would end up just like this creature, just like the dead outside. A person no longer, just a craving, a need. She felt the creature exhale in her face, the weight of it on her chest unbearable. She tried moving her hands, tried doing something, anything to break the spell the dead had cast on her but she couldn't even scream when the thing started chewing on her face. Rotted breath washed over her and sharp teeth were gnawing on her lips stopping her from screaming or even moving. Her mind was consumed with terror and yet she remembered thinking "why doesn't this hurt?"

Something was holding on to her hands now. She felt trapped between the ugly creature and her hands being locked to her chest. In a fit of terror and adrenaline she wrenched her hand free and swung at the creature holding her down. The pain as she hurt her hand while connecting to someone's face finally woke her up and all of a sudden she was sitting on the couch breathing in pain and panic, tears running down her face. The strange thing was that she felt relief. She wasn't dying, she wasn't being eaten alive. An injured hand seemed like a small price to pay to get out of the nightmare. Maybe not for the person she hit but certainly for her. She felt herself being drawn in to close contact with that same someone. Felt his chest as he pulled her in. Smelled the leather and greenery and fresh dirt on him. He was hugging her, tight. "It's okay", he said and she knew it was Daryl. No one else with that soft voice. No one else here.

Daryl held on to her, awkwardly patting her back murmuring soothing noises in her hair. And she cried. Bawling, hulking tears. There was no grace here, just pure terror. And she said between breaths "I don't want to die. Daryl. I don't want to die, please don't let me die." He said nothing, just held on to her with his arms wrapped around her and his chin in her hair, ever murmuring and soothing but refusing to lie even to comfort her. She knew as well as Daryl that there were some promises this new world would not abide. God was a bullet and that bullet could hit you anytime, anywhere. The world was dead. No one was safe anymore.

"Damn, you weren't kidding," he said as she calmed down. "They're really bad, aren't they?"   
Gabby nodded, not making eye contact. She felt awkward and weak. He'd seen her at her worst and now she was mortified. It didn't last long. She spotted blood on the blankets and looked up at Daryl. A split ran across his lip, still bleeding.  
"Shit! Did I do that? I'm so sorry!" She reached out to touch his face but when he flinched she thought better of it. "I've got some stuff in my bag, first aid kit." She dug through the pack and found the kit.  
"Don't worry 'bout it." Daryl felt his jaw. "You got a mean right hook." He smiled at that, but winced at his lip opening up again. A small trickle of blood found its way down his chin and he wiped it off, brusquely. She winced at that.  
"I think I need lessons. My hand..." Gabby's right hand was bruised and the knuckles swollen from the impact. She opened and closed her hand a few times, drawing in a sharp breath when her closed fist hurt unexpectedly.  
"You got an ice pack or somethin'? Keeps the swelling down."  
"Maybe..."she rummaged through her pack and found a chemical cold pack. She picked up the first aid kit and took out some gauze that she used to wrap the pack to her knuckles. Returning the leftover gauze, she saw the little bottle she'd thrown in there for good measure and took it out.  
"Can I put some of this on it?" Gabby held up a small bottle of liquid bandage. "It'll keep it from reopening." He nodded his assent and she sat down across from him. Picking up a disinfectant wipe she carefully cleaned his chin, touching his face gently with her left hand. "This is gonna sting," she opened another wipe and placed it on his lower lip. He hissed in pain but kept still. "Okay, can you hold this?" She handed him the bottle and picked up the little brush. Applying the bandage with her right, she held his lip together with her left and blew gently on the split. Gabby put the brush back in the bottle and screwed the top back on, then she used both hands to keep Daryl's split lip together. A few minutes later and the wound was closed up. "I'd better put a butterfly on it as well." She picked up the kit and pulled out the little bandage. Daryl had been very still and very quiet while she worked. She put the bandage on, just under his lip, smoothed it out so it stuck properly to the skin.  
"You done?" His voice was low, but it startled her. Strange as it sounded she'd forgotten he was there. She started packing the debris she'd spread around herself, picked it up and stood to find a wastebasket.  
"What're ya doin'?" Daryl was still sitting on the couch looking up at her.  
"Just looking for a wastebasket."  
"Don't have to. No one'll care." He got up and moved toward the front door. "Still got a few hours before dawn. Get some sleep. Gonna take a look around outside."  
He left Gabby standing in a strange living room, hand full of garbage and an uncomfortable feeling in her gut.


	11. Chafing

They set out early the next morning. The next stop was an ambulance station where Gabby had worked for a short time. Today she was driving and she was grateful for the distraction. She kept thinking about her loss of control and what the nightmares did to her. They'd be heading back in a day or two. She could probably do without sleep a day or two.

Daryl had the window open and sat playing with his hand in the air currents outside. His left hand touched the bandage and his split lip almost constantly. On occasion he shot her a look from underneath his curtain of hair, then he'd go back to staring out the window, looking at the world as it passed.

They were cut off from the exit they'd intended to take. As they crested a hill, the road up ahead was suddenly full of walkers. Gabby stopped the car as they surveyed the horde ahead of them.  
"Must be about two dozen down there. Should we risk it?" Gabby was looking at Daryl who'd sat up straight and rolled up the window when he saw the walkers.  
"Nah. If we get stuck it'll be hours getting out of there, maybe days. I don't wanna clean walker guts out of the engine again."  
She did a double take. "You got walker guts in the engine?"  
"Yah. This one time. We plowed through a field of 'em. Some of it got stuck in the intake. Had to remove that crap before the car would work properly." Gabby started giggling at the absurdity of it. Daryl looked a bit miffed.  
"I'm serious!" At that she laughed out loud. She could see Daryl's mouth twitching as well. Soon they were both laughing. Daryl put his hand on his lip once they'd calmed down. "Shit. It split back open." His fingers came back red, smeared with blood.  
"It's okay. Gimme my pack?" He reached behind them. At the same time a group of maybe ten walkers came out of the woods on the side of the road. "Shit!" Gabby put in the reverse and started backing away before they could surround them. A few hundred feet later, she did a turn and they left the corpses behind.   
"So what do we do now? That road is obviously not going to work..."  
"Where'd ya put the map?"   
"It's in the glove compartment."  
Daryl unfolded the map they'd brought. He was looking at it as they came to an intersection. Gabby thought it was safe to stop and considering how Daryl was bloodying his chin and the map, she figured it best to put him back together again. "Would you stop?" She handed him a piece of gauze. "You've got blood all over your chin. Wipe it off." Daryl had a bemused look on his face as he took the gauze. "Your chin. Blood. Oh for..." Gabby took the gauze from him and reached for his face. Daryl flinched. She leaned back, thoughtful. "What happened to you?"  
"What?" He took the piece of gauze back and wiped at his chin, hard. She gave him a look and found the first aid kit. Gabby sighed. "Nothing."  
"What?! Why'd you say that?" Daryl was clearly defensive.  
"I move to touch you and you flinch. It's pretty consistent."   
"Yeah, well ya ain't touched me that much. Just fix me up and let's get the hell outta here."  
Gabby cleaned up the blood and applied the liquid bandage again, just as carefully as last time. She replaced the butterfly band aid, and just as an experiment let her thumb sweep his lower lip before declaring him patched up. He stiffened at the touch, tension running in his shoulders, but he kept very still. Gabby just watched him thoughtfully. Something must have happened to him for him to be so tense. It was as if he expected her to hit him.   
"You're all set."  
"You wanna switch?" His voice held some of the tension that had appeared in his shoulders.   
"Switch?"   
"I c'n drive." It sounded like a peace offering. "Sure." She looked out the window before getting out. The road was clear. As they passed each other, he placed a hand on her shoulder. She nodded. "It's okay. I get it." And she did. They all had issues both from before and after the Turn. If they didn't, it probably wouldn't take very long for them to get some.

They continued in silence for a while but it didn't feel awkward. It was restful. Gabby read the map and made some suggestions, Daryl leaning over to look and point out some detail or other. They found an alternate route that had them crossing a field to a parallel road. Just a few feet from the road they were trying to reach, the car got stuck in the mud. Daryl got out to check how bad it was, muttering to himself as he made his way around the vehicle. When he came around to her side she opened the door.  
"How bad is it?" He chewed his thumb. "We need somethin' to put under the wheels. Back's pretty much sunk down to the wheel house. Plank or somethin' would do it." She stepped out in the field. The soil was soft and giving. "Dammit! You seen any houses around? A barn, maybe?"  
He looked around and then unceremoniously climbed the roof of the car. "Anything?" Daryl jumped down. "Yeah. There's a white building over that way. Probably take maybe half an hour to hike there though. More if we bring the packs."  
She hefted the bag she'd started to pack. It was heavy, but not impossible. "I think we should. There might be a vehicle there. We could just switch it out?" Daryl spat, picked up his pack and held the crossbow in his hands. "You ready?"   
"Just a sec." She strapped the empty gun to her pack, made sure the hunting knife was in its sheath. "Yup. Let's go." They used the road for a little while, trudging along with the heavy packs. Gabby was grateful she'd gotten some practice lugging her pack around, because with the added weight of the ammo they'd found and some of the food they'd looted, it wasn't a light load.

It didn't take long until she was more or less soaked in sweat. Daryl had the lighter pack but apparently that wasn't helping. By the time they'd been walking for half an hour her shoulders hurt from the chafing shoulder straps. From the looks of it, they were nearing the end of the field where Daryl had said he saw the white building, but if Gabby was to be honest she didn't think there was anything out there. Until, of course, the building came into view and turned out to be a farm house with a barn. There were a few walkers here, but no overwhelming amounts. Both Daryl and Gabby took their backpacks off and lowered them to the ground as quietly as possible. It didn't take much to create enough noise that the walkers would notice.

They snuck around the building and found about five corpses milling about the place. The first one went down without a sound, caught by a knife to the back of the head. The second squelched into oblivion thanks to Daryl's arrow. The third actually put up a fight and managed to get a hold of Gabby's sleeve before a quick strike to the back of its head dealt with it. The fourth went through knife to the temple, and the fifth was stomped into oblivion by combat boot.

The farm was empty. They found a pair of walkers stuck inside the barn in the horse stalls and Gabby had an unpleasant surprise when one of them came falling down from the hayloft straight on to her. For a few frantic moments she'd was trapped underneath it, it's jaws snapping just millimeters from her face. Daryl took care of it with a pitchfork to the forehead, showering Gabby with decaying brain matter.  
"Oh god that's rank!" She pushed the corpse away and found a water barrel a bit further in. She used a ladle hanging off the barrel to wash of the worst of the brain matter from her face and dried herself on a towel hanging by the barrel. Satisfied that she'd managed to clean off most if not all of it she sighed.  
"Really don't like begin' dirty, do ya?" Gabby shook her head. Daryl chewed his thumb again.  
"We should prob'ly see if there's anything we can use up at the house."   
"Sure. Christ this water feels good..." Gabby brought some of the clear water up to her face and let it drain down her neck and wash away some of the sweat gathered there. Daryl gave her a look and then went back outside. They picked their packs back up and made their way to the main building. It was a white wooden house with beautiful details, a house someone had loved at some point.

The walkers on the yard were the only walkers that had been there. The house was empty, and so was the garage. Daryl did find a decent piece of plywood outside but it was going to be hard to drag it along to the car they'd abandoned.  
"You wanna hole up here for the night? Might be easier to get some rest, then drag all this stuff back."  
"Are you sure? We could probably drive a few more hours before dark..."  
"If we stay here, I can get the car 'n the mornin'. Pick ya up." Daryl was picking on the edge of the piece of wood, not looking at her.  
"If you're certain..."  
"Nah, but it beats goin' back tonight when we're tired."  
"Sure. Let's see what we got."

The house was more or less picked clean. The only thing they found of note was a sad pack of pasta and a bottle of whisky of dubious quality. There was a fireplace in the house, so they made a fire and cooked a meal made up of pasta and more pasta. It wasn't very good, but it hit the spot. Daryl offered to take first watch. As Gabby was about to lie down, Daryl stalked across the room and gripped her shoulders. "What is this?!" He sounded upset, angry. Gabby had her back to him and had no idea what he was talking about.   
"What? What is it?"  
"Your shoulder. It's bleeding. Were you bit? Were you scratched?!" He kept holding on to her shoulders hard enough that it hurt.  
"No, I don't think so." She was turning her head, trying to see what he was looking at.   
"Take off your shirt. Lemme look."  
The t-shirt turned out to be harder to remove than she'd thought. It was stuck to her skin, and it hurt like hell to peel it off. As Daryl saw the wounds she could hear him breathing out. "What? What is it?"  
"Why didn't you tell me your backpack was cuttin' into your shoulders girl? You got blisters from here," he put a finger on the top of her shoulder "to here." He touched her just below the shoulder blade.  
"Aw shit. Yeah. I was sweating and the backpack was chafing. Honestly it stopped hurting after a while." She started giggling.  
"What?" His voice was softer this time.  
"I'm thinking that at this rate we'll not need the walkers to pick us off. We'll manage on our own. Death by blisters and split lip."  
"Put your shirt on. I'll patch you up in the mornin'."  
She turned around as she put her arms back through the shirt. He'd moved away and was sitting by the window looking out, biting his thumb and a frown across his face.


	12. Bandages

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finished editing. Ending is better, but not great.

She didn't sleep. When Daryl came over to wake her up in the middle of the night Gabby hadn't closed her eyes for longer than a few minutes.  
"Did ya sleep?" She shook her head. "No."  
"It's calm outside. No walkers and we're boarded up pretty good. We could risk it."  
"What? Sleep? Both of us? No, it's okay. I'm used to it."  
"We gotta drag that stuff back to the car tomorrow, and I don't wanna have to think for you too. You're tired you make mistakes. You don't wanna die. Neither do I." Daryl said the last part with a bit more emphasis. He didn't seem angry, more concerned.  
"How're your shoulders?"  
"Sore. Not that bad though."  
"Where's the first aid kit?"  
Gabby rummaged through her pack. Found it and gave it to him.  
"How's your lip?"  
"Stickin' together. Not that bad." He echoed her words back to her, a small smile on his lips. "Alright, turn around and take off your shirt."  
She did as he asked, discarding the dirty garment in her bag, picking up a fresh shirt. It was one of the hideously oversized hunting shirts she'd picked up in the store they'd raided. She held it to herself while Daryl messed around with the kit. She felt him carefully push her bra straps to the sides. "This'll probably hurt," he said. Then he put what felt like living fire on her shoulders. She sat up real straight as the disinfectant came into contact with her abused skin. "Oh, shit, I forgot how much that stings!"  
"Yeah, it's a bitch. Ya got anything to put on this?"  
"There's a tube of Neosporin in there. And some tape and gauze."  
Daryl carefully dabbed the antibiotic ointment on her shoulders. The skin had dried and every time he came into contact with the edges of the open blisters it hurt like blazes.  
"Maybe let it dry out?" There was a question in his voice.  
"No, better cover it, or I'll have this shirt terminally stuck to my back."  
"Aight..."  
There was some pressure, ripping surgical tape. When he carefully put the straps back, she shifted and put the shirt on. She had to roll the arms of the shirt almost up to the shoulders to have her underarms free. Daryl was putting the unused supplies back in the kit as she turned around. "On the plus side, I won't need a tent if I ever go camping in this outfit."  
Gabby got up to sit by the window. She looked back at him. He was sitting cross legged on the nest that she'd abandoned.  
"You don't talk much, do you?"  
"Don't see the need."  
"What happened to you?" Gabby didn't have to remind Daryl about the conversation they'd had. He looked down on his hands. "It's none of your business."  
"Okay. Fair." She turned her head to look out the window. The silence stretched out. Then, quietly.  
"It was my old man."  
"I'm sorry."  
"Doesn't matter. He's dead."  
"Still."  
"Yeah." Another silence that stretched for minutes. "C'mere. You need sleep." Gabby looked over to where he was lying on the floor. He'd made room for her, scooted to the side on the blankets she'd used to build a nest. She got up from the window and crossed the floor to him. Laid down on her back, winced at the pain in her shoulders and turned over to lie on her stomach. She turned her head so she could watch him. The weak light cast shadows over his face. He had his hands behind his neck, dark patches of hair in his armpits, the dirt on his arms enhancing the contours of his muscles. Gabby fell asleep watching him looking up at the ceiling.

She woke up with a back stiff as a plank. Her wounds had dried out over night, and the blisters pulled at her skin when she sat up. Daryl was nowhere in sight nor was his crossbow, but there was a lukewarm cup of hideous coffee by her pillow. She drank it gratefully before waking up enough to start wondering where Daryl had gone off to. A quick pass around the farm revealed a walker but not much else. The walker was quickly dispatched, although she had a mild fright when she got stuck with her huge shirt in a door handle. After a while she did notice that the plywood was gone and she stood there swearing for a good five minutes about men and their propensity towards risk taking before hearing a car approaching the driveway.

She wasn't stupid enough to think that it couldn't be anyone's else but Daryl, so she hid in the house, watching from the window. When it did turn out to be Daryl, she picked up their stuff and went out to meet him.

Daryl looked worn as hell. He had mud all over, even in his hair. It caked on his jeans and had dried on his arms and shirt. His eyes were even more sunken than they used to be and he seemed exhausted. She didn't comment, just packed the stuff in the car and gestured for him to get in the passenger seat.  
"Let's go get a defibrillator" she said as he got in. "Also, I owe you a cup of coffee." He nodded, put his head on the headrest and fell asleep.

Eventually they arrived at the ambulance station. The place was quiet. Behind the fence multiple bodies were lined up, encased in body bags. Some were moving weakly, others were still. An ambulance was parked askew at the entrance, and the parking lot was strewn with paper and fallen leaves that no one had been there to clean up. The building had the abandoned feeling that she'd gotten used to in the months and years following the end of the world. She slowed down and stopped, parked outside the gates blocked by the ambulance. Daryl was still asleep in the passenger seat. She reached over and shook him slightly. "Daryl, we're here."

As he was waking up, she got out of the car and started looking around. The ambulance wasn't locked, so she pulled the back door open and was rewarded with two freaks coming at her. One of them she managed to avoid, just. The other hung on to her oversized shirt and started snapping it's teeth at her. She heard Daryl swearing as she fell backwards with the creature on top of her, her only saving grace the fact that she'd managed to hold on to the walker's throat. A thwack later and the walker was history. She got up to see Daryl whacking the other one over its head with the stock of the crossbow.

"What the hell!?" Daryl caught up with her, all fire and brimstone, chest heaving in anger. "What the hell you think you're doing?"  
"I thought it was empty!"  
"Yeah well it wasn't! Don't go pulling that stupid shit ever again! You always make sure you've got backup! Always!" Daryl stalked away towards the building, then stopped. "You comin'?"  
"Yeah, I'll be right there." Gabby picked up her gun and her knife and followed Daryl back to the station.

There were a few walkers around, but not that many. They were easily dispatched and hardly worth the trouble. Most of the cabinets in the station were picked clean, but she did find some antibiotics - the more obscure variants that were used to battle resistant strains of bacteria, and therefore less known. She also found two defibrillators, both broken. She figured she could probably fix one with parts from the other. They also stocked up on bandages, surgical tape, scalpels and other items, what little was left. She found four IV bags with saline and two with glucose solution that were still within expiration date margins, so she grabbed those and some IV needles.

Daryl found a stash of Aspirin and Ibuprofen in a bookshelf behind a huge medical reference book. They declared themselves done a few hours later and returned to the car. Gabby did a final pass in the ambulance before they left and found a stash of absorbent surgical pads and - a real prize - a bottle of Vicodin that she put in her bag.

  
Daryl and Gabby still weren't talking to each other once they got in the car, and it turned out to be a tense ride for a while. Gabby couldn't keep quiet forever. When they reached an intersection she had to ask for directions. Daryl just pointed. At that point she had had enough.  
"I get it. It was stupid, but I'm okay. I'll do my best never to repeat it, okay? Just... are we good or are you going to be grumpy all the way back?"  
He was rubbing his fingers across his lips, the way he did when he was thinking or worried.   
"It's... I ain't always gonna be there. You have to be more careful. It's like ya stopped caring or somethin'. You were... I dunno. Less trusting b'fore."  
"So... what? I'm relying too much on you now?"  
He nodded.   
"Okay. I guess I can do that. It's just... it's nice not having to have my own back all the time. Letting down my guard."  
"Doin' that'll get you killed. Ya can't trust me. Or Rick. Or anyone. C'n only trust yourself."  
"That's depressing."  
"Yeah well it's true." Daryl started getting agitated again.  
"I get it. I'm sorry." At this point Gabby was getting upset. She tried keeping it out of her voice because she knew he was right, but that didn't really help. Ever since she ran into them on the road she had been expecting them to take care of her. It was a dangerous attitude to have and she knew it. The same thing had happened when she joined the soldiers. Slipping into old patterns. Trusting men to be the ones who had everything under control, when in fact no one was in control anymore.


	13. Anders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about this, but it felt like an unfinished chapter. Also there's sex in this chapter, so if that is a turn off, please look away.

The road back felt shorter than the road out. Maybe that was because they'd had to stop twice going out, but only once on the way back.

After the discussion in the car, Daryl had relented late in the afternoon and they spent the night in a barn. The hayloft was inaccessible to walkers, so they'd both tried to sleep after taking care of each other's wounds. Daryl's lip had closed well with no signs of infection. Gabby's back on the other hand, was crusted over and the bandages had stuck both to her skin and the shirt.

In the end Daryl had used one of the saline IVs to soften up the bandages but it had still hurt as he had eased the gauze off her blisters. She fell asleep that night like the night before. On her stomach, looking at Daryl's face, weakly lit by moonlight.

They arrived back at Alexandria late in the afternoon. From all the commotion, Gabby could tell that there was something going on. The community seemed to be in a celebratory mood. As they arrived at the gate she could see why. A truck was parked to the side and there were people dressed in uniforms moving about.

As Daryl and Gabby got closer she started to recognize some of the people. The truck was familiar. When Jeremy stepped out she opened the car door even though the car hadn't stopped. She ran across the lawn and as Jeremy spotted her, he opened his arms wide.  
"Gabby! Oh my god!"  
"Jeremy! I thought I'd never see you again!"  
They were hugging and laughing when a hand landed on her shoulder. She turned and there was Anders. Thinner, a bit more bedraggled than he had been, but smiling as if she hadn't left him behind. Before she knew it they were kissing. As she had Anders hugging her she spotted Daryl. He was watching them. His shoulders slumped a bit, but she had no idea if it was from relief or something else. She waved at him but he didn't acknowledge. He just walked off towards his home while Gabby greeted all the people from the windmill.

Anders was part angry and part relieved to see her alive. They spent the evening in her house (now designated their house) trading stories and figuring out what had happened since they'd parted.  
"You still have the bike?"  
"Out back. It's a fighter, but the rear tire's got a flat and we never found a repair kit."  
"Well", said Anders while kissing her neck "I've got a surprise for you."  
"Really? Another one? You just being here and being alive is pretty surprising to me." She sighed into his hair as he moved down to kiss her clavicles.  
"I should give it to you..." He'd started unbuttoning the horrendously oversized shirt she was wearing. He was moving down to her breasts. "Don't you dare stop. I haven't had sex in ages..." she could feel him smiling against her skin.

A loud knock rang out as they were doing their best to get rid of each other's clothes, and since this was Alexandria, knocks did not go unanswered. She buttoned up her shirt, smoothed down her hair and went to open the door. Daryl was outside, her first aid kit in his hand. For a moment she felt inexplicably guilty. She pushed the feeling away and opened up. Anders came out in the hallway to see who it was and was pulling on his shirt as Gabby opened the door.  
"Hey Daryl. What's up?"  
"Forgot the kit 'n the car. Thought you'd need it for th' shoulders. I'll be goin'."  
"Hey, wait, no! Umm, this is Anders. One of the soldiers I was telling you about. Anders, this is Daryl. Him and Rick saved my life." Daryl looked uncomfortable. Anders stretched his hand out to be shaken, but Daryl just looked at him, judging and determining where on the scale of usefulness Anders would fall.  
"Right", he said, then he left.  
Gabby just stood there mouth hanging open.  
"Well, that was rude." Anders put his arms around her and started pulling her back into the building.  
"He saved my life. Him and Rick. Mostly Daryl though. And he's mean with a crossbow, so best to stay on his good side." She turned and walked him into the house, closing the door behind her. Anders pressed up against her, pinned her to the door and was trying to get into her shirt again.  
"I don't think he likes me", he said while kissing her behind her ear. "I think he's jealous."  
The thought made Gabby falter for a moment. She rallied. "Nah. He's like that to everyone. It takes a while to get to know him." And then "Ow!"  
Anders had run his hands across her blistered shoulder in his attempt to get her shirt off, and the shirt had stuck to the bandages again. The bandages in turn were stuck to her skin. They broke off their make out session, Anders wanting to take a look and patch her up.

They took it upstairs and into the shower, Gabby stepping into the warm water with the shirt still on. Anders on the other hand was naked and very happy to see her. After the shirt had been removed, they made love in the shower. Gabby's back pressed against the tiles and her legs wrapped around his hips. He carried her to the bedroom and they fell asleep in each other's arms.

Sinking into sleep, the darkness was overwhelming her, and she felt cold and abandoned. On some level she knew she was dreaming and that this would be a bad one. The walkers were everywhere. They swarmed across Alexandria with murderous and hungry intent, and there was nothing to be done, just to run away. One of them had grabbed her as she was climbing out the window and had started chewing on her clothes. She was crying silently, her vocal cords unable to produce any sound. She was trapped between heaven and earth, all alone and no one to save her. Someone held on to her, tried to comfort her, was talking to her.

As she struggled her way up to the surface, out of the dream and into the waking world she heard a strange man's voice talk to her. He wasn't quite right, wasn't the one she was supposed to hear. She woke up completely and found herself staring into the face of Anders.  
"You were saying his name." He said as he held her. "Whose name?"  
"Daryl's."

Things weren't quite the same after Anders and the soldiers had arrived. Daryl was making himself scarce by constantly going on runs, so she didn't have any chance to talk to him. Through Jeremy she found out that Fran had left the group after breaking up several of the couples living at the windmill, and they'd grown tired of her antics and exiled her. She had returned with another group of people who tried burning the windmill to the ground. They had had limited success, but the foundation was unstable and after Clay had hurt himself stepping through the floor, they decided to leave.

They had travelled for a while, and they lost Ben and Arthur to walkers, but they had found Alexandria eventually, and with it Gabby. The integration into the Alexandrian community was fairly painless. The windmill group consisted primarily of soldiers so discipline was high. They were also a social and friendly group of people and they'd brought quite a bit of ammunition with them, which apparently helped grease any wheels that might have needed greasing.

Anders and Jeremy hung out with Abraham and Rosita quite a bit. Gabby also saw Anders trying to learn the sword with Michonne, but Daryl was conspicuously absent. Gabby even went looking for him at one point, but was told by Carol that he was out hunting.

Then came the day when Rick and Morgan discovered the walkers in the quarry. Anders, Jeremy and the rest of the soldiers from the windmill were busy helping to construct the wall that would lead the walkers away from Alexandria. Gabby was back in the community, waiting to defend it. And so, the last days they would have together, they spent apart.


	14. The Hollow Men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this became slightly darker than I thought, but on the other hand I wrote it in the middle of the night.

Secretly, Gabby had been hoping that it was all over now. That Alexandria could somehow be the safe haven that she had been praying for but all dreams die, eventually. The Wolves came. The walkers in the quarry were discovered, and then the tower fell.

Gabby was reminded of a fair she'd visited as a kid. A Romani fortune teller had laid the Tarot cards for her in a tent smelling of incense and fresh fruit and flowers. She had loved it, but the cards had not been in her favor. The Tower had shown up, and even though the fortune teller had tried to spin it positively, later that year her mother had left for an extended period of time. Even though her father denied it, they were close to falling apart as a family. Her mother had returned but during those months of absence something had been irreparably damaged between them. The relationship had lost its luster. There were no more secrets whispered and giggled at, no more late night cocoa expeditions to the kitchen when she couldn't sleep. Instead she confided in her father and his loss was the greatest pain she felt when the world ended, closely followed by the loss of her sister. Strange as it may seem, to some extent she blamed her mother. She was the one who had got bit, after all. She was the one who had clawed at her sister and sunken her teeth into her father.

Now the tower had crumbled again and the walkers had taken Alexandria. Anders and the soldiers had not returned from the efforts of steering the walkers away from the safe zone. She had no idea if they were alive or dead. The corpses were swarming Alexandria. Freaks were walking down the streets, the tower had fallen and Gabby didn't know what to do. She felt like she had in the basement. Solid ground shifting under her feet and the insistent pressure of her mind trying to break. A few lines from TS Eliot's The Hollow Men kept repeating itself in her head as she desperately held on to sanity.

_We are the hollow men_   
_We are the stuffed men_   
_Leaning together_   
_Headpiece filled with straw_

The freaks out there were hollow. Everything they were was gone only to be replaced by endless hunger. She was trying not to notice people she had talked to just hours before the tower fell now walking past her, their brains usurped by a disease that reduced them to nothing but want.

She was lucky. She had been at her house (home was still too strong a word for it) when the tower had fallen, looking to get some sleep before taking another shift in the watchtower. She had been woken up by the crash, dragged from a dream that had been pleasant for once. And then panic had taken over the world. Panic and violence. She had run through the house bolting the doors and closing the windows. The walkers were flooding past her door. Some took the time to go scratching at the walls, grasping at the windows, nails dragging on the outside of her world, pushing her to break again.

_We are the hollow men_   
_We are the stuffed men_   
_Leaning together_   
_Headpiece filled with straw_

She could have stayed in the house and she would have been safe but when Anders passed the window as one of them she had to act. He would never have left her to that fate, never have allowed her to become empty, hollow like that. He would have killed her. So she dragged herself out into the chaos of Alexandria, desperate to reach him and to end him.

The walkers were unfocused, shifting like a shoal of fish. Their attentions easily drawn by almost anything that moved or made a sound, and since they themselves easily fit that pattern they weren't very aware. They were also weak for some reason. Maybe the many months stuck in a quarry with only themselves for company and no living creatures to devour had changes them. Lessened them. They were easy to dispatch, kill being too strong a world for what happened to them when they ceased functioning.

She exited the front door and started knifing the mindless creatures around her. She still wore the hideous shirt she'd gotten at the hunting store, the arms and shirt tails flapping as she moved. Before long she was covered in blood and guts and brain matter, and that seemed to lessen the interest the creatures had in her. Headpiece filled with straw. That was them alright. Empty vessels, she thought. Seeking them who they may devour.

She had never been in a crowd of freaks this big, never felt their fetid breath as they moaned their way through their unlife and she was unsettled. Unhinged. Unraveling. She walked among the dead, trying to find Anders in the crowd of dead, spotting his tall frame and reddish hair now and then but always thwarted by a creature with too much interest in her, or a surge in the crowd pushing her sideways. She found that sudden movements would bring their attention so she lifted her arms carefully and pushed the knife in at the back of their heads as she killed them.

She had been in pursuit for what felt like hours when she finally caught up with him. His muscular back had been exposed presumably by one of the creatures ripping the back of his t-shirt open. When she saw how they had ravaged him she almost lost it. They had eaten parts of his face, the left side being almost gone, while the right side was peculiarly unmarred by teeth or nails. They had taken his bowels, dug deep enough to expose his spine in places and she wondered not for the first time how they could even move with such damage done to them. She started crying then. Slow rolling tears without sound, grieving for the man who had woken up in her bed just a few days ago.

We are the hollow men, she thought. "Goodbye Anders", she whispered to him. She stood on his right, caught his attention, and when he moved to strike she broke his knee. As he went down before her, kneeling in a grotesque imitation of a proposal, she put her hand on his undamaged cheek and punctured his brain. As he collapsed so did she. She sank down to her knees, cradling his broken head in her lap.

She sat in the flood of walkers with the brain matter of her dead lover oozing over a shirt she hated but couldn't bear to throw away and she was prepared to die there. The sudden movements that concluded the existence of Anders had interested the corpses, and some of them were shuffling her way to find out what that compelling smell was. Gabby in turn had raised her knife to her chin, prepared to kill herself rather than become one of the creatures milling about around her.

Tears were streaming down her face, making their way through blood and gore, and she sat there, waiting to die in the dark.

And then the fire started, drawing the creatures away. One crying woman was no match for the blazing flames gracing the pond. Black clouds of smoke and an orange light filled the sky. Gabby remained where she was, tears streaking clean lines across her face, like a war painting of grief.

She still sat there, early at dawn when a patrol was moving through the streets closing off the wall and killing any stragglers. She had fallen asleep there, with Anders's head in her lap. They thought she was dead at first, and expected a walker to get up at any moment. Maggie, who was leading the patrol got them to stop and examine her before killing her. She put her hands on Gabby's shoulder, waking her up.  
"I killed him", she said "He was already dead, so I killed him."  
The patrol helped move the corpse from Gabby's lap. Maggie led her back to her home and left her there in search of someone who could take care of her. Gabby sat where she'd been put, thinking about the hollow men, and how this world the way it was now was hollowing them all into nothing.


	15. Whisky

Coming back to the world was gradual. Gabby felt like she was swimming under water, but she had periods of clarity. None of it was really showing on the outside. She helped with rebuilding the wall. She foraged for acorns and berries for Carol. She even smiled at the dinners she was invited to, talked about the future and congratulated people on their progress and accomplishments. She helped Denise patch people up in the infirmary and she did it carefully and meticulously, but unless anyone initiated contact, she wouldn't talk to them. She stopped sleeping again. Her dreams were invaded by her father and Anders.

She was caught when she got drunk on the whisky she'd found on the run with Daryl. She had drunk maybe three glasses of the foul fluid when Daryl passed by, on watch as usual. Not having drunk any alcohol for years had made her tolerance low, so she was - in a word - shitfaced. Perhaps that's why she waved at him as he passed. They hadn't talked more than in passing since the soldiers had arrived at the safe zone. Once when Daryl had brought a guy who had fallen down the stairs and twisted his ankle and once when they ended up next to each other while getting some food. No one had asked her to go on another run, and she hadn't volunteered.

He came over to the porch where she was sitting, barefoot and bare legged in one of Anders's old t-shirts. "Have a drink", she slurred and filled the glass for him. He took it from her hand and sniffed the contents. "How much 've you had t' drink?" Oh, she had missed his voice. Her filter temporarily on the blink she told him. "Three glassessess", she giggled at her mispronounciation. "Daryl, I've reeally missed your voice. It's like hon.. honey. Sweet, like you." He just looked at her, the glass of whisky in his hand. "Can't sleep?"  
"Nooo..." she said, dragging the word out while she swayed back and forth. "They eat me alive when I sleep. Like I'm a worm, a glow worm. They're so hollow. They need stuffing, so they eat... us." She hiccuped and belched and then let out a laugh while she covered her mouth with her hand. "Oops, sorry, sorry."  
"C'mon", he said and put the glass down. "I think you've had enough." He took the bottle from her and screwed the cap on.   
"No", she lamented. "I juss wanna sleep one night without glowing." He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him and muttered something. "What was that?"  
"I said you smell good. Like leaves n' leather n' that... thing you... thing." He kept his arm around her, hugging her to himself. "That thing?"  
"Crosses." She muttered, her head lolling on to his shoulder.  
"The crossbow?"  
"Mm..."  
They sat like that for a little while until she fell asleep against his side, the darkness claiming her again but this time it was mercifully empty.

When she woke up the next morning she was tucked into bed. A glass of water stood on the dresser and two precious tablets of aspirin were placed next to the water. She groaned when a sudden movement of her head set off a headache of epic proportions, and she tried to remember what had happened yesterday. She only recalled thinking that the whisky was a good idea. In retrospect it seemed more like stupidity. Stumbling to the bathroom after having downed the pills and the water, she took a long shower, trying to get rid of the kinks in her neck and the headache she was having. Despite limited success Gabby still felt a lot better after freshening up. She had a shift in the infirmary so after a very light breakfast she headed out.

It started out as a slow day for Denise and Gabby, but an accident while building the wall back up had them rushed off their feet. One of the Alexandrians got bit on his ankle by a walker, and they had performed a field amputation, but the man was losing blood. Denise dove into her work with Gabby helping out. The saline IV they had saved for times like these helped keep the man alive until they had managed to close the blood vessels and sewn up the stump. But that was only the most urgent victim. Another one of the people working on the wall had managed to get a cut running from shoulder to elbow when the sheet of metal had fallen and a third had had his hand broken when trying to prevent the same thing. Gabby cleaned and sutured the woman's wound while Denise set the bones in the man's hand. The rest of the victims of the accident had smaller scrapes and dents, but it still kept them both busy until long into the evening. Denise was checking on the amputee when their last customer came through the door. It was Daryl with a cut palm that needed cleaning and stitches. He'd gotten the cut while cleaning up the mess from the accident. There was quite a lot of blood on the rag he had used to cover it while walking to the infirmary.   
"Think I need some stitches", he said as he walked through the door. "Cut m'self pretty bad."  
"Sit down", Gabby said and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves "let me take a look."  
The cut was on his left hand, a small but deep laceration in the area between thumb and index finger. It gaped open when he opened his hand to show her, and even though the blood had slowed down it was still bleeding. "Yeah. We need to stitch this up, or you'll have a hell of a time getting this to heal."  
Gabby had some saline solution left from earlier work. She placed a stainless steel basin under his hand and used a syringe without a needle to irrigate the wound. "We don't have any painkillers to spare. I'm sorry but this'll hurt pretty bad."  
"Yeah, 'm used to it."   
"Okay. Tell me if I need to get someone to hold your arm down? You'll want to pull it away, but if you do, I might hurt you even more."  
"Yes ma'am. How's your head?"  
She looked up from her ministrations. "That was you? I'm sorry. My memory is sketchy to say the least. In retrospect, drinking on an empty stomach wasn't such a good idea."  
"Never is."   
"Thanks for the aspirin."  
"No problem."  
His hand twitched as she reached the deepest part of the wound with the saline. A fresh trickle of blood ran into the basin with the salt water.  
"Good news is that this will only need stitches in the skin. Bad news is it'll probably hurt like hell."  
Gabby prepared a suturing needle, their equipment still sterile thanks to a scavenged autoclave. Denise walked into the room as Gabby pushed the needle through the skin at the edge of Daryl's palm. He was pale as a ghost and his hand was twitching where it lay on a towel.  
"Denise, could you get someone to help hold Daryl's arm? No anesthesia."  
"Oh, well you're in luck." Denise disappeared behind the curtain they'd placed between the rest of the room and the amputee's bed. "I've got some left over local anesthetic from the surgery before."  
They never threw anything away that might be used. Denise changed needles on the syringe and walked up to them. "Oh. That looks nasty." She put on gloves. "Hold his arm?"  
Gabby walked around to place herself by Daryl's elbow. She held his arm with both hands close to the wrist and put just about everything she had into holding it still. The suturing needle was still dangling from the first half stitch. Denise inserted the needle a little above the wound and injected a bit of the painkiller. Then she moved to another part of his hand and made another injection. All the while Gabby felt Daryl's muscles bunch and tense underneath her hands. It probably hurt real bad.  
"Okay that's it", Denise put the syringe and needle aside. "Just let it settle for a few minutes before suturing the rest, okay? I'll go get Tara. We need someone on Patrick, but I'm beat."  
With a cheerful wave Denise was out the door and off to get help.  
Gabby looked at Daryl. His face was drawn and he was sweating, but she was happy to see him. She realized she'd missed him. "You know, we have to stop meeting like this."  
"What?"   
"Nothing, I was just trying to be funny." She poked his hand with the tip of the needle. "Can you feel this?"   
"No."  
"Okay, but you tell me if I need to wait a bit more, okay?"  
Daryl nodded. Gabby started pushing the needle through the skin again. This time there was no reaction from Daryl. With the local anesthesia, the wound didn't take long to patch up. She cleaned it again before putting some antibacterial ointment on it and packed it into a slightly exaggerated dressing.  
"If you need to use this hand, please put one of these on first", she gave him a pack of vinyl gloves. "You don't want to get this dirty. Be back in a week to take the stitches out. Let me know if you want help changing the dressing."  
"Sure", he said getting down from the bed where he'd been sitting. He hesitated a bit, looked like he wanted to talk to her. Before any of them could say anything Tara and Eugene entered the surgery. Tara started pulling Gabby out as she was cleaning up. "I've got orders from Denise. You're to go home and get some sleep."  
"Yes, she was adamant about it, so I wouldn't dawdle if I were the person currently occupying your shoes." Eugene took over the cleaning duties by pulling the bottle of bleach from Gabby's hands.

Gabby and Daryl left the surgery together. Outside the darkness was falling and they made their way home through a safe zone that had seen better days. Some people were still on cleanup duty, but most of the corpses had been cleared out of the area where everyone lived. They reached Gabby's house first. She turned to him to say goodnight but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.  
"I wanted..." Daryl hesitated. "'M sorry 'bout him. Maggie told me..."  
"Yeah. Thanks."  
"C'mere." He pulled her into a hug. "Someone once told me ya gotta let it out. Booze ain't gonna help. Ya gotta grieve. It's okay." She breathed in the smell of gun oil, leather and fresh greenery that always seemed to follow Daryl around, and she let herself rest in his arms for a moment. Before it started getting awkward she pulled away.  
"I've missed you", she said. "I've missed talking to you."  
He looked down at his feet. "Yeah. I'd offer to take ya huntin' but..." he held up his wounded hand.  
"Come by tomorrow. I'll cook. We can talk. Bring the whisky."  
He nodded, looked at her a moment more and walked away.


	16. Soup

Gabby used some of her saved up rations to get food for the meal she intended to cook for Daryl. She felt ridiculously domestic, something she never used to be. There wasn't much to choose from, but there were some chickpeas and a can of tomatoes. Gabby was more than aware of her limited cooking skills. At this point she'd be happy if she didn't poison them with her food. She had some sad carrots and some lentils at home so she figured she'd make a soup. As she browsed the shelves of food - what was left of it - she felt eyes on her.

Turning around she caught Carol looking at her with a calculating expression on her face. Gabby waved at her. She knew how fond Daryl was of her so she figured it couldn't hurt to be friendly. Carol wasn't returning her wave. Instead she came over to stand next to Gabby, ostensibly looking at the cans of tomatoes on the shelf next to her.  
"So, I hear you're entertaining tonight?" Her voice was somewhat cool.  
"Um, yeah. Daryl told you? I thought I'd just... I wanted to talk to him." Gabby was a bit surprised at the choice of subject. "You have any good cooking advice for... uh, chickpeas, lentils and carrots?" She could hear the forced cheer in her own voice. For some reason Carol was quite intimidating.  
"A soup would probably work."  
"That's what I was thinking. Well, see you around." Gabby made to leave but Carol blocked her.  
"It might be tempting to think that Daryl can take care of himself, that he doesn't need anyone to look after him, but don't make the mistake to think he's alone. If you hurt him", at this point Carol was staring daggers at Gabby, moving closer, "if you hurt him, I will hunt you down." After that little outburst, Carol smiled her sunny smile and walked out of the storage room. At the door she turned and waved and said "good luck with your dinner tonight!"

Gabby stood at the shelf with tomatoes, completely shocked. Carol had never registered as someone to watch out for, but the little display in the storage room had her re-evaluating her previous idea of who (and what) Carol was. She knew that Carol had played a significant part in saving Alexandria from the Wolves, but she never put that knowledge in perspective. Not really. Now she had, and it was somewhat disturbing.

She took the goods she'd retrieved for Olivia to tally and then started back to her house. Deep in thought, she was considering Carol's words. What was she expecting Gabby to do to Daryl? She just wanted to talk to him, so why was Carol acting all protective of him? A thought struck her. Maybe they were together, somehow? Maybe Daryl had gotten the wrong idea about what Gabby wanted? Although - truthfully - Gabby wasn't entirely sure what she wanted herself.

Maybe she should talk to him? She went back to the house and unloaded her stack of supplies, only to go back out again in search of Daryl. If nothing else, she could figure out if Carol and he were involved somehow. Not that that would change anything. Or so she told herself. She ran into Michonne as she was looking for him.  
"Hey Michonne. Do you know where I could find Daryl?"  
"I don't know. He might be over at Aaron's place. I heard he found some more parts."

She waved a thanks and set out, still considering Carol's words. There was something hidden there, a secret at the tip of her fingers.

Gabby found Daryl in Aaron and Eric's garage, trying to construct a new motorcycle . He was absorbed by what he was doing, digging into the oily body of the bike with little regard for how dirty his hands were getting. She was thinking that had it been her, she'd used latex gloves or some shit like that. Before the end, she carried wet wipes everywhere. Another thing she left behind by necessity, the need to have clean hands. Neurotic behaviors had been the first thing the end of the world had weaned her from. Or it had done its damnedest to try anyway, but sometimes the borderline OCD came back to haunt her. Daryl looked up from his tinkering when she walked down the steps.  
"Michonne said I'd find you here."  
"What's up?" he was drying the worst off his hands with a rag dirtier than the bike and she saw with some distaste that all he managed to do was to smear the oil and grit around. Thankfully he had covered his damaged hand with a glove.  
"Your girlfriend threatened me. Said that if I hurt you, she'd kill me. Not in so many words."  
"Ain't got a girlfriend..." Gabby could tell he was a bit confused. "What'cha talkin' about?" She winced as he stuffed the dirty rag in his back pocket.  
"Carol. She acts like a momma bear about you. There some kind of history there?" Gabby watched him as he moved around the parts that could, with some generosity, be called a bike fastening a bolt here, tightening something else there. It seemed like he was some sort of physician only his patient was a partly assembled motorcycle. She assumed it was a bike, anyway. It was hard to tell from the mess on the table. The reply was slow in coming.  
"She's... she's Carol. She does shit like that. Don't mean nothin'. She just cares is all."  
"Really?" Gabby raised an eyebrow.  
"Yeah."  
"So you two aren't..?" Gabby made some kind of weird gestures with her hands. Daryl looked down. "Stop." was all he said in response. "Then why'd she bite my head off?"  
"I dunno. What were you guys talking 'bout?"  
Gabby could feel her cheeks flush. All of a sudden this didn't seem like the best idea in the world.  
"Dinner. She said you'd told her you were coming over."  
The look on Daryl's face was one of complete confusion. "Why'd she talk to you 'bout that?"  
"I have no idea! That's why I'm asking you!" Gabby could feel herself getting frustrated. She'd been hoping that there would be some easy explanation, but nothing seemed easy anymore. The result was that both of them stood there looking at each other, maybe a bit exasperated, maybe a bit confused.

The prolonged eye contact had Gabby feeling a sudden rush of desire. Her stomach was fluttering and she felt a sudden need for him that she hadn't been aware of before. The conversation with Carol had clarified it, pushed the feelings to the surface, and this conversation had opened up the possibilities even further. She felt like the answers were at her fingertips if she would only reach for them. Gabby and Daryl kept looking at each other, locked in some weird battle until Aaron's voice interrupted them.  
"Hey guys. Daryl, I was just heading out to do some hunting. You want to come?"  
Daryl broke the eye contact, and Gabby could see his cheeks tinged with pink. She herself felt like her face was about to explode. She'd not blushed this hard since high school.  
"Alright", she said almost running out of there. "I'll leave you guys to it."  
"Are we still..?" Daryl's voice followed her. She turned, met his eyes again and felt that same intense rush. She nodded. "Sure. See you then."

Walking, almost running home, she was considering everything that had happened. This would complicate things. On the other hand if she was to be completely honest with herself she had known what she felt all along. Ever since she'd first seen him there had been this thing happening between them. The only reason she hadn't fallen into bed with him was his reserved nature, and later her connection to Anders.

She sat for hours on the couch thinking about that and about how she felt until someone knocked on the door and she realized that she had forgotten to cook.


	17. Crying in the kitchen

Gabby opened the door and there he was. She could tell he'd made an effort. He had a shirt on that still had its arms and he'd cleaned up. She, on the other hand was still wearing the same Iron Maiden t-shirt that Anders had left behind. One of many. She didn't even like Iron Maiden, she just wore it to get closer to him. Considering the revelations she'd had today, the joke was on her.

Daryl had been watching the street when she opened the door. It was a quality that both he and Rick shared. A vigilance that never really left, but there he was and now he was turning around.  
"Hey" he said. He was chewing his lips, looking at her from under his curtain of messy hair.  
"Hi", and then when she'd put herself together again, "come in."  
There was a moment of indecision when he'd crossed the threshold. He was standing there looking down at her, his hands shoved in his pockets, trying to make himself smaller by pulling his shoulders in towards his body. Maybe it was the setting. They'd never really been alone this way before. She broke the silence. Told him a bit of a lie to cover for herself.  
"I fell asleep. I forgot to cook."  
"'S good. That you slept." Another moment of just looking at each other and she was ready to... god she had no idea what, but that he was oblivious to how she felt was increasingly frustrating. If he knew, he'd never had just stood there. He'd run away. Or something else. The something else part was a thing she didn't - couldn't - define right now.  
"What's wrong?" He was studying her closely, still biting his lip. She moved aside and walked a few paces into the house.  
"Nothing, sorry. Did you bring the whisky?"  
"No."  
"No?! I was counting on some alcohol..." she stopped herself. He smirked at her.  
"What? Thought you'd already slept."  
"Um, yeah. So did you guys go hunting?" She was hoping that a change of subject would distract him. Gabby had left before Aaron had gotten his answer.  
"Nah. Can't. Hand's a mess. Doin' just about anything hurts." A bit of concern floated to the surface in her otherwise confused mind. Something practical to hold on to. Something to do.  
"I can change the dressings for you. I'm just going to start the food and take a shower." He sprawled down in a chair. He bit his thumb, and she had to flee to the kitchen.  
"You want something to drink? I've got some lemonade..." she was hunting for a glass when he appeared in the doorway.  
"Nah. But I can help."  
They started weaving and walking around each other, Gabby very carefully avoiding touching and Daryl seemingly not noticing. The kitchen was pretty big after all. The kind of place she could never have afforded on her own. Now it was just there for the taking.

She diced the carrots, poured the tomatoes together with some broth in a pot and put it to boil. Gabby had forgotten even the basic recipes she used to know, but it smelled okay so while the soup was puttering on the stove she moved to go upstairs to get a shower and change her clothes. He caught her, then.  
"You don't have ta change", he said in his low voice. "Ya ain't grubby, and ya don't smell bad or anythin'." Gabby wasn't sure what to think of that. Should she be flattered that he'd noticed? What did "not grubby" mean coming from a man who didn't wash unless he had to? That reminded her that he had obviously taken a shower before coming here. Which in turn made her aware that she was standing very close to him and that he smelled even nicer than usual. She found herself leaning towards him. He lifted his hand to his mouth and stroked his lips with his finger. Still those watchful eyes on her. Gabby had learned fairly early that he saw a lot. She was wondering what it was that he was observing now? She took a step back.  
"Umm okay... uh... you want me to take a look at your hand?"  
"Sure."  
She pointed at the kitchen table and went to get her first aid kit. He was sitting down with his left hand on the table when she got back. Taking the chair opposite Daryl she reached out and pulled his hand closer. Gabby started unwinding the bandages ever so gently. When she got to the pad that covered the wound she was pleased to see that there wasn't much fluid. She removed the pad. The wound was healing very nicely, so the only thing to do was to put another dressing on it. This time she used a surgical band aid. She cleaned the skin around the wound very carefully with some antiseptic solution. Maybe she took more time than she needed, but it felt good holding his hand like this. The band aid went on and she spent some time making sure it was properly affixed to his skin before finally giving Daryl's hand back to him.  
"Thanks."  
"No problem. Just keep it clean, okay? No messing around with bikes without a glove and come see me in a few days to get rid of the stitches. You're lucky it was such a clean cut."  
"Gabby, you ok? Been actin' a bit weird lately." His words startled her.  
"Yeah, I'm good. I think."  
"But ya stopped sleepin' again?" She got up to stir the pot on the stove and add the rest of the ingredients.  
"It's nothing. It happens. Anders... and..." A stray piece of carrot splashed some of the boiling soup on her hand and she hissed, pulling her hand away. "It's nothing." In a moment of truthfulness she told him. "I wasn't sleeping before, earlier today. I was just thinking and I forgot..." Daryl interrupted her confession.  
"It ain't nothing. Did ya think about what I said?" Only constantly.  
"Yes. I think I do let myself feel it. It just takes some time." Turning around to look at him she brought her mildly scalded hand to her mouth. "I had to put him down, you know. I couldn't let him wander around like..." her voice broke and she felt her eyes tear up. What she couldn't tell him was that she felt guilty. She felt guilty that she hadn't barely mourned him before realizing that what she really wanted was right here, in the kitchen with her. It made her feel even worse.

Daryl got to his feet and pulled her in to his chest. For someone who pretended to be a recluse, he was very physical. He touched people, reached out to them. Gabby had seen him casually sling an arm around Carol's shoulders more than once and he was generally free with his affections towards people he trusted.  
"You ok?" He rubbed his hands up and down her back in soothing motions. She wanted to lie to him, but in the end she didn't.  
"No."  
"You gotta know when to let go. You gotta. Or it'll eat at ya."  
"I know." Gabby started crying in earnest. "I should have saved him. I should have. Why was I so stupid? Why did I let him go?" She rubbed her face with her hands, pressing her knuckles into her eyes. The tears came hot and painful.  
"You didn't let him do anythin'. He was a grown ass man and could take care of himself, you know that." He framed her face with his hands running a thumb down her cheek, watching her.  
"You need sleep." Daryl let her go, took the pot off the stove, turned off the heat and put a lid on the soup. "C'mon, the food'll keep." He started moving towards the stairs with her in tow. She came along, hesitantly.  
"I can't. Every time I close my eyes I see..."  
He didn't have to ask what it was she saw. He just pulled her behind him. Without effort, he hauled her up the stairs to the bedroom. He folded the covers aside and sat her down on the bed.

She kept crying as he took her shoes off, then her socks and laid her on the bed. "No." Her protests were weak. "I can't sleep, not now. Please don't make me sleep..." Daryl took his own shoes off and slipped out of his vest. Then he crawled down behind her and pulled the cover up around them. Held her tight, his chest against her back, and whispered "sleep" in her ear. So she did.


	18. Barbecue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow update pace. Spending a depressing holiday all on my own in a foreign country, so I really don't have the excuse of family time, but for some reason Daryl is fighting me.

It was the middle of the night when she woke up. For a moment she thought Anders was back. An arm was lying heavy on her waist, but then she remembered. Daryl was breathing softly at her neck. She was considering getting out of bed, moving to another bedroom, but her insomnia had been more or less constant ever since the Turn. She felt safe, at least for the moment. Having him at her back was comforting. She spent a few moments enjoying the feeling until sleep once again pulled her under.

When she woke up again, he was gone, and there was daylight. She sat up in bed and felt the space where he had slept. It was cold, which meant he'd left some time ago. Gabby got up and made her way down to the kitchen. Daryl had put the soup in the fridge and cleaned up the mess from yesterday. A note was lying on the counter. The handwriting was messy and hard to read, but after a few confused moments Gabby deduced that Daryl had gone out with Aaron to find more people to interview and bring back to Alexandria. After additional deciphering she deduced that he'd be gone for a few days. She smiled at his signature. He'd drawn a crossbow at the bottom of the note, and with surprising skill.

The next few days were hectic. The repairs to the wall brought in fresh walkers, and the people of Alexandria got nervous around walkers. Nervous people tended to have more accidents, and there were quite a few. Anything from nasty splinters to stepping on nails, and in one memorable instance, a nail gun gone rogue with a maimed thumb and a piece of wood that turned out to be very difficult to remove. Denise had relented and used some of their precious anesthesia to sedate the poor man.

Patrick, the amputee, pulled through and by the end of the week he seemed to be out of the woods. He was mourning the loss of his lower leg, but a raid on a nearby hospital found him both a replacement foot and a pair of crutches. The woman with the cut, Cynthia, on the other hand wasn't doing so well. The wound had gotten infected, and with the infection came a high fever that threatened to kill her. Denise and Gabby worked hard for two days to get the fever down without using their precious stash of antibiotics, but they had to concede. The antibiotics did the trick and Cynthia was soon back on her feet.

The raid on the hospital also had Gabby working with Olivia to set up a tally of what they had to offer in the form of medication and other goods. The tally drove home an important realization. In a few years, the antibiotics they had painstakingly gathered would be useless. The expiration dates were not that far off. As a result, Gabby and Denise started looking around for replacement therapies. A raid on a medical library gave them the history of penicillin and other antibiotic microorganisms and some experimentation with molds and a fermentation crock was initiated.

Gabby was just cleaning out the first failed experiment when Daryl came by. Him and Aaron had just returned, but without additional prospects for the safe zone.   
"Wow, that's one rank smell."  
Gabby looked up from cleaning the homemade crock, a wide smile on her face.  
"Hey Daryl. Yeah. We're trying to make antibiotics. The results so far have been stunning failures. How'd the raid go?"  
"We didn't find anyone. Picked this up for ya." He handed her a rattling paper bag.   
"Gimme a minute", she went to the sink and washed her hands. "Hand it over." He gave her the bag. "What is it? Antibiotics? Painkillers?" Gabby opened the bag. There was a bottle of Anacin and a generic ibuprofen brand, but at the bottom there was also a bottle of prescription Ambien. She looked up at him. He was chewing his thumb and watching her from under his curtain of hair. "Probably shouldn't use 'em outside the safe zone."  
"Where did you find these? I've been looking... Thank you." She put the drugs down on the table next to her. Then she took a step forward and hugged him. He seemed surprised, but at least he didn't flinch anymore. He even let his arms rest loosely around her. Stepping back Gabby felt a bit silly and for some reason slightly weepy. They were standing there watching each other for a while until Denise bustled in through the door, her arms full of dried herbs.  
"Daryl! You're back! Did you find any... you know?" Denise unloaded the armful of herbs on the work table, reaching down to pick up a few bundles that had fallen to the ground. Daryl smiled one of his close lipped and very subtle smiles and reached into his bag. A battered can of soda changed hands with a fair amount of squealing on Denise's part.  
"Oh, thank you! This is gonna be great!"  
"How's your hand? Any pain? We should change the dressing and I want to pull the stitches." Gabby moved to grab his left hand and was surprised when he let her. They moved to an empty bed, Gabby sitting Daryl down and bringing a tray over. She opened the dressings and was slightly miffed. He'd torn some of the neat stitches and the wound had healed less pretty than she would have wanted.   
"You've managed to give yourself a scar. What did you do?"  
"What?" He didn't sound repentant at all. Gabby even thought he might be smiling.  
"You've pulled the stitches. This could have healed very neatly, but now you'll get a scar." Gabby started cutting the knots and pulling the sutures out. He hissed at one of the opened stitches. "That's what you get for being careless. It's stuck, so this is going to sting,"  
Daryl subjected himself silently to her ministrations. When she was done, she cleaned the scar and felt the tissue. Apart from the slightly gnarled scar tissue where he'd managed to pull two of the stitches, the scar felt fine. No hidden abscesses or pockets of bacteria. She cleaned it again and put on a bandage. Maybe she held on to his hand a bit longer than she should have, because Daryl got up from the bed and made towards the door.  
"Right. I should head out. Need to dress the deer. We did some hunting on the way back." Daryl turned to go, heading down the street when a thought struck Gabby. She stuck her head out the door and hollered at him.  
"I still owe you dinner." He just raised his arm, continuing down the street, not looking back.

Aaron and Daryl had managed to fell a big buck, and even though most of it would be preserved and rationed, Rick made a decision to treat the Alexandrians to a barbecue. Walker activity had been limited, despite the construction of the wall, and since the wall was more or less finished, a celebration was in order. They found a steel drum to saw in half and some chicken wire to put on top. A raid or two in the basements of some of the houses that had actually been lived in before the Turn rustled up enough coal to grill for a week. The mood was high the night of the barbecue. Some enterprising inhabitants had even managed to find a couple of bottles of wine. For some reason there was also vodka, and Gabby recognized the bottle of whisky she'd pilfered on her run with Daryl a while back. No one had touched it since her spectacular drunken adventure, and honestly, Gabby had no need to repeat her mistakes.

The grills were turned on in late afternoon, with the age old pattern of men getting overexcited at the thought of controlled fire apparently having survived even the apocalypse. The common area by the pond was full of men explaining to each other how the meat was to be cooked. Gabby had no choice but to laugh at their antics, something she shared with quite a few of the women gathered at the sidelines. Everything felt so normal.

As the evening wore on, people were getting less vigilant, more intoxicated by the wine and the spirits and the meat they were eating. A few of them were pulling away from the main crowd and settling near the pond to talk or make out. Gabby was on her second glass of wine when the screaming started.


	19. Ex-Charlie

She, and a few of the others, dropped everything when they heard the screams. It was coming from the far side of the pond, and in the darkness it was hard to see what was going on. She caught Daryl running with a bat in his hand towards the noise. She came to an abrupt stop when she saw what had been happening. One of the walkers must have spent time at the bottom of the pond without being seen. It wasn't that strange, it only had one arm attached to a torso that was more like leftover entrails than a body, a set of shoulders and a ribcage crowned with a hungry head. It was chewing on a man - Charlie she saw as she approached, and it had bitten Fay badly on her shoulder. The grotesque and slightly incongruous part was that the flesh the thing had chewed off Charlie was spread in lumps from the lower part of the torso, like a trail signifying the pointless hunger of the walkers. It was chewing on meat that literally went straight through it. Gabby had a hard time keeping the nausea in check when she saw it, understood it.

Daryl had made it to the unfortunate couple and the parody of gluttony that was the walker, but he had trouble wielding the bat with one hand. Even though he hadn't said anything, Gabby suspected that the cut was still painful and Daryl's attempts with the bat seemed to confirm her suspicions. She was still running round the pond together with Glenn and Maggie when Charlie came back. In contrast to the snail like, one armed walker, ex-Charlie was an actual threat.  
"Daryl!" She found herself shouting at him although he'd already seen Charlie getting up. He kept fumbling with the bat, not getting any real power behind his swings. Charlie was approaching. She put another gear in, driven by fear and adrenaline. Just as she reached ex-Charlie, ex-Charlie was about to grab Daryl and propagate the incessant hunger to him as well. Daryl in turn had let go of his bat and stabbed ex-Charlie in the head at the same time as Gabby did. In addition to that, Fay was still screaming bloody murder, and the snailish walker kept crawling along the turf towards warm blooded humans, towards food.

Gabby heard a crunch behind her and turned to see Glenn stomp the head of the walker into the ground. Maggie had her arm around the hysterical Fay, trying to calm her down. They all knew what that bite meant, not in the least Fay herself. At least she'd have time to say goodbye.

The adrenaline and fear coursing through her system had her seeing red, and she wasn't quite sure what she was doing as she took a step across the fallen walker, blood still dripping from the knife she had thrust into the back of its skull, hard enough to crack it entirely.  
"What the fuck were you thinking, Daryl?! That you can't die, is that it?! What the fuck?!" She realized she wasn't making much sense. She was shaking hard, as if she'd run for days with no food, and he was just standing there. She wiped off the knife against her thigh and sheathed it.

He had a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth and a knife in the other hand as if he'd never been in danger. As if ex-Charlie that she'd just sent off to wherever corpses went when they were... what? Killed? Hadn't mattered.  
"Calm the fuck down. I had it." He put the knife back in the sheath, picked the bat up and slung it on to his shoulder with a practiced movement and took a drag on the cigarette. As if nothing had happened. He just stood there as if nothing was wrong.

All of a sudden she was really close to him. She had no idea how she'd gotten there, but she was holding on to his lapel and pulling him down towards her. His cigarette had gotten lost (had she really plucked it from his mouth and thrown it on the ground?) and she was pushing up against him, kissing him hard on his lips. He opened his mouth hissing a breath and clearly surprised at this new development, and she took advantage. For a moment Daryl was just standing there, hands at his sides. He waved them about a little, as if trying to swim through his emotions. Her hand was tangled in his hair, and she was kissing him. It took a while for him to respond, but when he did it was with some care, not at all matching her fervor. She knew that he probably had no idea what was going on. He was still not touching her even though he'd dropped the bat in surprise. He had raised his hands and she could see them opening and closing, as if wanting to hold on to something but not entirely certain what that might be.

He tasted of ash and smoke, but underneath it his breath was sweet. Someone gave a wolf whistle and Gabby returned to her senses. She was shocked at her own behavior to say the least, and with the whistle came the realization that she'd just kissed Daryl in front of everyone, and she'd done it in anger. Gabby let go, took a step back and could feel her face burning. This was not something she had planned.  
"What the hell...?" Daryl sounded mostly confused as he stood there.  
"Oh God, I'm so sorry." Gabby turned and ran out of the little park, into the darkness of Alexandria.

Daryl caught up with her at her porch, where she was sitting in the dark, contemplating what the hell she had been thinking, pulling a stunt like that. He sat down heavily beside her, another cigarette dangling from his lips. He'd ditched the bat somewhere and he was looking slightly confused in a tight lipped Daryl kind of way. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and let it out slowly, then tapping the ash from the glowing tip.  
"Those things will kill you." Gabby's voice was low and tired.  
"Well, that's me. Death wish." He raised his eyebrow at her and went back to staring out into the darkness.  
"Oh hell... I'm so sorry Daryl, I..."  
"You know I had it. I woulda used the knife."  
"But your hand. And the ex-Charlie thing... You scared the crap out of me."  
"I got that." And then after a while. "The ex-Charlie thing?"  
"I don't know. What do you call them when they're not people anymore? Because they're not people anymore. They're just husks and hunger. That's all they are. The more it happens the harder it gets, you know? I thought seeing my dad reduced to nothing but a skeleton by these things was bad enough, but every time it happens it just eats away at me. Every time a person dies and comes back as one of those things I think my soul dies a bit."  
"Anders?"  
"Not just Anders. All the possible deaths in the future too. Everyone I care about. So I'm trying not to care." She looked down at her hands and pulled at a half broken nail. "Sometimes that's really hard."  
She could see the tip of his cigarette moving as he spoke.  
"Maybe you should stop trying? I mean, we are..." Gabby turned to him, interrupting him.  
"What? What are we, because this is not a life, not really. Survival isn't enough. There has to be more, and soon, or I'll go out of my mind. I'll die from the stress of it." Daryl just looked at her, eyes unreadable. He stubbed the cigarette out on the side of the porch, saving the butt. After a while she spoke again.  
"What happened to Fay?"  
"Last I saw, Michonne and Maggie hauled her off to the infirmary with Denise."  
"Are they gonna kill her?"  
"Dunno. Probably. If she wants it." He picked up a twig and started playing with it.  
"What would you do? If you got bit like that?"  
"I'd take as many of the fuckers with me as possible before I go down. You?"  
"Yeah. I'd save a bullet for me. Before the end, I'd use it on myself." She'd started crying without noticing. Fat tears rolling down her face. He put an arm around her. They sat like that for a while, listening to the events of the day winding down. Gabby doubted people would be sleeping tonight. After a while he lit another cigarette.  
"You smoke too much."  
"It's the end of the fucking world. Who cares?" She took the cigarette from his hands and took a drag, ended up coughing because it had been so long since she smoked. He took it back.  
"I care."  
"Stop."  
She learned into him, and they stayed there for some time, listening to the cicadas, listening to people milling around, going back to their places, reminded yet again that what they had was not safety, just a reprieve from the horrors of the world around them.


	20. RV

Daryl left her at her porch a few hours before dawn. She tried apologizing for the kiss, but he just waved her away as if it was nothing. Instead of sleeping, Gabby went to the infirmary to see if there was something she could do. When she entered she saw Fay laying on the bed, curled up around a pillow. Tara was there, gently stroking her back. Denise was asleep in one of the hospital beds snoring lightly.  
"Hey." Gabby was whispering in order not to wake either Fay or Denise.  
"Hey Gabby. She's asleep now, but it took a while. She wants to say goodbye, and then we'll... You know." Tara's voice was thick with emotion and shed tears.  
"How long, do you think?"  
"She's got a fever, but it's not too bad yet. I don't know. A day, maybe two."  
"Did she say what happened?"  
"Yeah, they were fooling around. She felt something bite her, but she thought it was Charlie. It hurt so she pushed him down and got up. The walker bit his throat and pretty much killed him immediately. She was too shocked to do anything but scream. Then you, Glenn, Maggie and Daryl came along and killed both Charlie and the other walker." Tara was still stroking Fay's back. Long soothing motions to keep her asleep. She looked up at Gabby. "They're dragging the lake tomorrow, looking for more stragglers. We thought it was..."  
"Yeah, I know."  
"Where'd you run off to? After?"  
"I needed to clear my head. I went home."  
"So, Daryl, huh?" There was a hint of a tease in Tara's voice. She smiled as she looked up at Gabby from where she sat next to Fay. It was odd, that, but they had both learned that life in this new world was brief. Sometimes you had to take joy where you could find it.  
"It was adrenaline and fear. I apologized to him." Gabby sat down on one of the empty beds. Pulled her legs up towards her body.  
"Why?! He obviously needs it. Haven't seen him be friendly with any women except Carol." Tara was gently pushing Fay's hair out of her face, stroking her cheek. Gabby could see Fay's swollen eyes even when she was sleeping. What a nightmare to be bitten, knowing you were about to die. She shook her head.  
"I don't know. He's really hard to get a read on."  
"Has he brought you anything? Just for you?"  
"Well..."  
"What?"  
"Sleeping pills. He knows I don't sleep very well. We went on a run and I had a nightmare. I socked him one in the jaw when he tried to wake me." Tara's eyes were large.   
"You hit him?!"  
"Mm... gave him a bloody lip. Had to patch it up as well. Very romantic."  
Tara giggled quietly behind her hand. Fay was moving and murmuring by now, so they both quieted down. A few hours later, Denise had woken up again and took over guard duty from Tara. Tara went to bed, and Gabby got to work with the first patient of the day. The excitement from the day before had caused a few sprained ankles and minor injuries. The weirdest patient of the day had cut her ear, and refused to say why. A bit later it turned out she'd taken a kitchen knife with her to bed.

Fay turned out to be a surprise. She recovered from the fever, and showed no signs of infection. Both Denise and Gabby were confounded over this development. Rumors were spreading that Fay was immune to the disease until Denise thought to check the clothes Fay had been wearing. The cloth was unbroken. A closer look at the wound showed broken skin, but no teeth marks. It was a Hail Mary pass. Fay spent three hours crying and another few days under close supervision, but nothing happened. Gabby suspected that the fever had been hysterical. A trick of the mind.

Daryl was also something of a mystery. He'd taken to come by Gabby's house in the evenings, just to talk a bit. She started making late suppers, enough for two. They would sit on her porch, Daryl snarfing down the food. Sometimes they would talk. He kept asking if Gabby slept, enough that she started getting self conscious about it. She hedged an answer more often than not, but she had a feeling he could sense that she wasn't. It had occurred to her more than once to ask him in, ask him to sleep in her bed, but she wasn't sure how he'd take a request like that.

At some point she was asked to come join him and Aaron on a run. They were hitting a suburban area where they'd seen traces of people and they wanted some reinforcements from someone with medical training since they had found blood and bandages among the leavings. They took two vehicles, the RV and a car. Aaron drove the RV and Gabby rode with him. Daryl took the car and scouted ahead of them.  
"So", Aaron was keeping his eyes on the road but had been talking ever since they left Alexandria, "how about Daryl, huh?"   
"What about him?" Gabby had a feeling he'd worked his way up to this. They'd been talking about the pond, her reactions, basically everything that had happened to her before she'd arrived at Alexandria.  
"You like him. I can tell." Gabby felt herself blushing under Aaron's scrutiny.  
"Yeah, well, after the pond thing I doubt anyone missed that..."  
"Oh, you've been the topic for conversation for a long time, trust me. I've even tried talking to Daryl about it, but he... well, you know what he's like."  
"Yeah."  
"So..."  
"So?"  
"Are you going to do anything about it? He won't. I don't even think he knows how."  
"I'm not sure my advances would be welcome."  
"I'm not sure he knows what advances are. He's like a kid in that respect. I'm not even sure he's ever... you know?"  
"What makes you think that?" Gabby was curious despite herself.  
"He's been... You know when Anders and the soldiers came to Alexandria?" Gabby's face darkened with pain, remembering how her friends from the windmill had died in the walker disaster. "Yeah." Her voice was quiet. Aaron took a look at her. "I'm sorry. I know you liked him."  
"Yeah, well. This is a new world. I'm pretty sure you'd do the same for Eric."   
"I hope I would. We're a rare breed these days." Aaron chuckled a bit. "Anyway. After Anders arrived with the soldiers... Daryl was really irritable. He got mad for just about anything. Wanted out of the safe zone as often as possible. Then Anders died and he did a 180. He kept asking for you to come along on runs like this. I'm not sure he knows how he's been acting, but ever since you kissed him I've seen him smile more than ever. You should be careful. He's not... I don't think he's ever been involved with anyone this way." Gabby huffed out a laugh.  
"I know for a fact that he and Carol..." Aaron interrupted her. "Yeah but Carol's more like a good friend or a mother figure. I doubt there's anything else going on there."  
"So..." Gabby felt a bit lost. She didn't know how to handle any of this.  
"I'm gonna give you guys some space. I doubt we'll find the group today, so we'll probably stay out here for the night. You get some alone time and you can try to figure it out." Gabby was gaping at him, completely flabbergasted.

They spoke very little for the rest of the day, but it wasn't uncomfortable. Gabby got the feeling Aaron had said what he needed and that the rest was up to her. As evening crept along she got more and more nervous, until finally they decided to camp out and continue looking the next day. Walker encounters had been scarce, they'd found a few stragglers here and there, so it was decided that the RV was good enough shelter. Gabby took first watch, Daryl second. When Aaron woke up to take over, he shook Gabby awake. "Talk to him." He said before climbing on the roof and taking up watch for the last stretch of night.

When Daryl came in the RV he looked tired and frozen. It was cold outside, and he'd been wearing his sleeveless shirt and vest. Without thinking she held the blanket up. "Come on. It's warm." Daryl seemed surprised she was awake. He took off his vest and crawled into the double bed that Aaron had just left and laid down next to her. There was plenty of space, but he huddled close, his back to her underneath the blankets. She could feel how cold he was, so she slung her arm over his waist and pulled him closer. He sighed, took her hand and fell asleep.


	21. Children

She laid awake for a while, feeling Daryl's chest rise and fall underneath her hand. He kept holding on to her, even though he was asleep. When she finally closed her eyes, dawn was only a couple of hours away, and they would soon be leaving to look for the survivors. Listening to Daryl's breath, she finally Let her eyes close and darkess take her. But it wasn't a calm descent. The blackness swirled around her, pulling her under into a land of nightmares and violence.

She was back there, in the house. She was trapped at the basement door with her father in front of her being overwhelmed by her mother, her sister and her neighbors, people she'd known all her life. Her father went down, but unlike what had actually happened, the basement door wouldn't open, it was stuck. The dead surged against her, pressing her into the door like a dark tide. She could feel it when they started eating her flesh. There was a moment when the first bite caused a rotten red flood to sweep through her bloodstream. She could feel the virus running through her like a wildfire, hot and burning, and then cold and deadly. She felt herself turning off, one feeling after another, until all that were left were anger and hunger. She fought to keep the anger, held on with both arms, whimpering. But they were holding her, they were eating her alive and they wouldn't let go, not until all of her had disappeared, pulled into the undertow of hunger.

"Hey Gabby. Gabby, wake up. Gabby! Wake up!" She came awake from the surging blackness slowly, as if she held on to the dream as tightly as she'd held on to her last feelings in the dream. Daryl was leaning over her, both hands on her shoulders. He looked worried and flinched a little when she moved her hands. She felt cold. A remnant of death clinging to her.  
"There y'are. Wasn't sure if you'd sock me one or not." Daryl looked her over. She could feel a slow blush rising on her cheeks.   
"I was dreaming..."  
"Yeah, figured. Wanna try to get some more sleep?" Daryl looked tired. Gabby nodded. He mirrored her behavior from earlier in the evening. He laid down on his back and lifted the blankets and she snuggled close, her cheek against his shoulder and her hand on his chest. He had his arm around her. Once they'd settled down she whispered "Thank you."  
"Ain't nothin'. Those dreams are something, huh?" Gabby nodded against his chest. "Do the pills help?"  
"The pills?"   
"Yeah, the stuff I brought back?" He was squinting down at her, his neck at an angle that had to be uncomfortable. When she answered he went back to looking at the ceiling.  
"Sometimes. Those are mostly to help me fall asleep."  
"None against bad dreams?" He rubbed his hand over her back, as if to comfort her even though she was very much awake at the moment.  
"I don't think there ever was."  
"Anything you know helps?" Gabby drew a deep breath and figured now or never.  
"You help..." he was squinting down at her again.  
"What?" She could hear the confusion in his voice.   
"Never mind. I shouldn't have said anything. I just..."  
"Just what?"  
"I feel safe with you. It helps." She looked up at him lying there in the twilight. He was looking confused, his free hand at his lower lip. He wasn't looking at her anymore, he was looking at the ceiling of the RV and chewing his thumb. After a few minutes of silence, she adjusted her head on his arm. "It doesn't matter. We should be getting up, I suppose."  
"Gabby..." he hesitated. She could see him frowning.   
"What?" She raised herself up on her elbow. Daryl looked up at her, obviously conflicted and maybe a bit confused. His eyes flickered to her lips, back to her eyes. All the while he seemed both terrified and uncomfortable. She placed her hand on his cheek, and he covered it with his own. She bent her head down and kissed him, softly.

At that moment, Aaron opened the door to the RV. Gabby broke the kiss, but not quickly. Daryl was still looking as if someone had struck him with a hammer, terrified and uncertain.  
"We'll talk about this later," Gabby whispered as she got up to greet Aaron. Daryl just nodded, but stayed on the bed as Aaron and Gabby prepared breakfast. He didn't say much all morning. Aaron offered to take the car, but Daryl declined.

Gabby on the other hand felt strange, as if stuck in some sort of parallel dimension where all bets were off. She had no idea what was going on between them, but at least now she had an idea of why Daryl was so reluctant to start something. He just had no experience.

The day wore on in some sort of strange limbo. They found additional traces of the group they were looking for, but the people themselves were strangely illusive. Aaron and Gabby talked about just everything except her experiences with Daryl, although Aaron gave her some knowing looks during their search for the survivors.

They ran into a small horde of walkers by the end of the day, a sad gathering of two adults and five young children. Daryl was quick about disposing of them with the help of Aaron, but Gabby froze as one of the youngest children came shuffling towards her.

It was a slow motion moment when Gabby knew that this was it for her. A fitting end to her existence, being bitten into oblivion by a child. She only had eyes for the kid as he moved across the uneven and pockmarked asphalt, arms outstretched as if seeking comfort from her. Even though she knew those gnashing teeth didn't belong to a human being anymore, she still couldn't raise her knife to a child. Before the walker could take a chunk out of her, Daryl appeared behind the diminutive walker, shoving his knife roughly through the back of the child's skull, splattering her with rotting brains and blood. It was the last of the horde. Gabby promptly turned around and puked, the smell somehow getting to her in a way it hadn't previously.  
"Gabby, seriously!?" She could tell that Daryl was angry with her, an anger she shared to some extent.  
"Sorry. I froze. I just couldn't..." Daryl huffed and wiped his knife on the kid's shirt.  
"No shit you couldn't. Don't do that again." He stalked off towards the car, having a brief chat with Aaron before getting in to the battered Volvo.

Aaron walked by her as she stood and watched Daryl tear out of there, full speed.  
"We're meeting up with him farther up the road. He said he'd found a good place to stay for the night." His hand on her arm brought her back to herself, and together they walked back to the RV.

Daryl had found a small lake to camp by. It was an idyllic little piece of the world. A quiet place with no traces of the apocalypse that had happened around them. The woods behind them offered some shelter from the wind, and the lake even had some bird life, ducks quacking softly in the twilight and then falling silent as the night crept up on them.

Aaron took to refilling the water reservoir of the RV. While he was down by the beach, he shouted to Gabby to join him, feel the water. After getting a sour look from Daryl, "you know noise carries over water", Gabby joined Aaron at the beach, feeling the water. It wasn't too cold, so Aaron and Gabby opted to wash off the struggles of the day, taking turns keeping an eye on the surroundings.

She was wringing her hair out when Aaron suggested it was time to call it a night. Gabby offered to take first watch, and climbed on to the roof of the RV, blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a rifle on her back. She settled down on the roof, the lights from inside casting bleak tendrils of illumination around them. As they put out the lamps in the mobile home, darkness fell across the lake, and the sky lit up with stars. Gabby settled in for yet another night in the world that had come close to killing her today.


End file.
